Blogger's Challenge #86 - Valentine's Day Project #2

Have I ever told you what a great Mother-in-Law I have? Well, my Mom is great too, but my MIL Betty works for a company that takes catalog orders for several different companies like American Eagle and Restoration Hardware. At Christmas this year, American Eagle (AE) used these cool red gift boxes for their orders of gift cards that were mailed out. They had tons of them left over and my MIL thought I could make something out of them so she snagged me a couple dozen! Thanks Mom!

The first photo shows the unaltered box. It's so cool because it already had grommets in the side for the ribbon ties, all I had to do was replace their ribbon with Stampin' Up!'s gorgeous Pink Pirouette Striped Grosgrain ribbon!

To create the lid, I trimmed a piece of Pink Pirouette cardstock to fit the top, covering the silver printing. Then I ran it thru my Big Shot Die Cut machine with the NEW, WAAAY Cool Texturz Plates! These are incredible - I Love the dimension they provide. For this box, I used the small polka dot because it matched the Candy Lane Designer Series Paper that is on the inside of the box. Once it was texturized, I sponged the bumps with Pretty in Pink ink then covered the whole thing with Versamark and Iridescent Ice Embossing Powder to give it the fun, sparkly finish! It was attached to the lid with Sticky Strip.

The little tag was created with my Pun Fun stamp set. I stamped in Basic Brown ink on Whisper White cardstock because I was watercoloring with my Aqua Painters. (Basic Brown is waterproof and won't run into your color) I painted in the cup with Chocolate Chip and Riding Hood Red ink and added Crystal Effects to the coffee and the hearts for some fun dimension. This piece was then layered onto Riding Hood Red and Pink Pirouette with the Pink being sponged with Riding Hood Red. A Silver Eyelet set thru the top with my Crop-A-Dile allowed me to easily thread some Pretty in Pink Taffeta ribbon thru the tag to tie it to the top of the box.

The inside of the box was so easy to make. I used their gift card insert as a pattern and cut my own using a piece of cardboard from some Designer Series Paper. After scoring it in the right places, I used some Tombow Adhesive to glue down a piece of Candy Lane Designer Series Paper. This glue works so, so well. There is a bit of a learning curve on using just the right amount, but once you have used it, you'll LOVE it!

The dsp was stamped in Riding Hood Red with the Valentine sentiment from the Holidays and Wishes stamp set and this was overstamped with one of the hearts from the Love You Much stamp set. I didn't cut any slots for the gift card becasuse a couple of Mini-Glue Dots willwork great to hold it in place!

All in all, this was a pretty easy project to create - I hope you like it! If you are really, really nice to me, maybe I'll adapt it for a Birthday Class that I'm planning for this spring. Would you like that? Ok, send me chocolate if you want to do that! NO, just kidding! Leave me a comment instead! That is less fattening and makes me smile just as much!

While you are at it, be sure to check out all the other great Valentines ideas from my Blogger's Challenge friends! Click on the link in my sidebar to find them!

I'll be posting again tomorrow and Sunday, we are travelling for a skating competition, but I've got some posts planned ahead!

Happy Valentine's Day my friends!

XOXO ~~Robin