Twisted Tube Treats

My post on the Get Funky and Craft blog today is a Twisted Tube Treats Box which might come in handy for Halloween, or Christmas or whatever other reasons you can think of for giving someone a little treat.

The great thing about this one is that you can make it in whatever size you like as the starting point is simply a rectangle of thick paper or thin card.

 Twisted Tube Treat Box

Because of the shape of these boxes, the easiest way to work out what size box you need is to have a "dry run" using a sheet of ordinary A4 paper first.  For instance even using a quarter of a sheet of A4 will produce a box big enough to hold a lot of small sweets like Smarties or Jelly Tots - if you want to make tiny boxes to hang on your Christmas Tree, consider making them even smaller.

So just cut a sheet of scrap A4 into half to start with and  follow these instructions to get the idea first on how it works, and work out whether you need a smaller or larger rectangle to create the size box you need

For this Halloween themed treat box, I started with a rectangle that is a quarter of a sheet of A4.  I've used Funky Hand's Spookie Dookie download for this one

 Turn to the "wrong" side and from one edge, fold in about 1cm and make a crease.  Apply glue or tape down the folded piece

Now,bring the other edge over to line up with the crease and stick down to form a tube - just like the card  inner tube from a loo roll!

 Now, flatten one end of the tube - keep the join at one side of the flattened end, use glue or tape to stick these two edges together. I find glue is a bit easier to apply on the inside edge.  You may find it useful to have a supply of mini bulldog clips handy to hold all the edges in place while they dry

For the next crease you need to flatten the top end of the box in the other direction - this time, make the crease but don't do any sticking as your box needs to be filled first! You should end up with a box with 4 triangular "faces"

At this point you need to decide what to put in it and how to close it.

You could just add glue as before and maybe make a sticker to decorate the box with

If you want little boxes to hang on the Christmas Tree you could simply fill with goodies, then add the glue as before, but remembering to tuck in a loop of Bakers Twine to hang it with.

Or if you've made a larger box,  punch some holes and thread ribbon through to hold the opening together - this is nicer for a gift box, I think. 

Or punch a medium sized circle and stick half down on each side of the box opening - it would be simple then to open with scissors

How about making 24 of these in some  of Funky Hand's Christmas designs (such as these form Funky Hand's Yule Be Funky CDrom)- add a number to each , hang them on a branch or display in a big bowl and you've got a unique and stylish Advent Calendar. 

That's it for this time, I hope you like these little boxes and will have ago at making some. Thank you for visiting

Getting Sentimental

Gez is the challenge setter over at the Daring Cardmakers this week and she wants to see our favourite sentiments and quotes on our cards...plus a little "side" challenge of using a new technique, or revisiting some old favourites.

This is definitely one of my favourite quotations  - from that well known scribe "Anon" ;)

I use this one a lot and have it saved on the pc so that I can just change to different fonts and colours to print out and use.  Sometimes it takes a while to get the format exactly right if I want to use a particular die to cut it out.
In this case I just wanted to print it in a single colour on a simple panel, so that bit was fairly easy.  
My "try something new" plan was to do the whole background piece, using a couple of different paper designs and the sentiment so that it would all print in a single layer and just need an embellishment of some sort to finish it off.  Whilst the printing bit worked OK, the"adding an embellishment" part was a disaster and the card was a total write-off!  
In the end I used the sentiment panel as one piece then printed a couple of pieces of extra paper to make the coloured sections of the background - all were printed on a lovely Bazzill Basics  Diamond - White Shimmer Cardstock- I've not used this stuff for printing on before and I do love the slight sheen you get
To finish the card I decided to use some lovely ready made flowers for a change - I really should do this more often ans I appear to have boxes and boxes of them!

Materials and Tools

Cream cardstock for card base and embossed layer

Digital Download papers: "Wash it All Away" by Funky Hand

Bazzill Basics  Diamond - White Shimmer Cardstock

Mulberry paper flowers and leaf

Gems and Pearls 

EK Success border punch

Petite Dots embossing folder by Crafters' Companion

The team have, as always created some gorgeous cards, so pop over HERE to see them all

Thank you for visiting, please leave a comment ;)

Scripted

It's Beckie's turn to set the challenge for the Daring Cardmakers this week:

"With the nights drawing in there is nothing better than cosying up 

with a good book! For The Love Of A Good Book

So this week I would like to see a page from an old book used on your card. This can be taken from an old book or if you have a stamp with a script on it you can use that too."

 For once I had an idea of what I wanted to do - a couple of different ideas, in fact - which made a nice change from pushing paper around the desk! One idea was for a Christmas card using script patterned paper, the other for a "regular" card and making a flower from old book pages

First though I needed to find my Christmas stash - which proved the most difficult bit.  The funny thing was though that although I thought there was at least one "script" style paper in every paper set, it turned out there wasn't.  In the end I used a right old hotchpotch of 6x6 pads and dies to make this card

Tools and Materials:

Smooth, Cream card blank

Dark red Bazzill card, Gold card scraps

Papers from MME, Simple Stories, Carta Bella, all 6x6 pads

Glitter card in gold and dark red

Gold twine, red and white Baker's twine

Snowflake dies: Sweet Dixie, Spellbinders, Crafters Companion, Memory Box

Snowflake Punces: EK Success, Martha Stewart

For the next card I used some old book pages from my "might come in useful one day" box to make a flower - then used the off-cut from the first card to make a scrapling.

Tools and Materials:

Smooth, Cream card blank

Papers MME "Lost and Found" 6x6

Seam Binding, Black card for swirl

Card Candy, Pearls and Gems

Ink

Old book pages for flower

SU Punches for flower 

The flower is made with 5 large punched shapes and 2 smaller ones.  I damped them then added some colour with pinky peach ink. I blotted the paper with kitchen paper to remove excess water then crumple each petal and left to dry (well a bit, as I'm too impatient to wait longer), while I made the background for the card.

Once uncrumpled I just glued the petals together using the smaller ones at the top of the stack, and crumpled them up again to get a shape I liked

As always the design team have come up with lots of inspiring ways to use script papers, stamps and book pages, so I hope you'll click HERE to check them all out

Thanks for visiting

Oh Oh Is that a Cword card I see?

Yes - THAT time of the year is looming large and I can't put it off any longer.  I know loads of people who make their Christmas cards throughout the year, thus avoiding the mad panic at the end of the year, but I'm not one of them.  If I did try and make a few each month I know I'd just hate the earliest ones and chuck them in the bin and therefore still need to make extras and have the mad panic to get enough made in time.
So it's about this time of the year that my mind turns to Cword cards and I start trying to come up with some ideas.
Now, I think the current sketch on The Sketch File blog might provide a pretty good outline for getting at least some of my cards made, so yesterday I made these two, using the same papers, but twisting the sketch round. 

 October Sketch File LO
 Papers: Pink Petticoat
Turquoise Glitter Card
Turquoise  Ribbon
Tiny star punch
Snowflake die: Sweet Dixie (set of 4 snowflakes)

October Sketch File LO
 Papers: Pink Petticoat
Silver Glitter Card
Silver  Ribbon
Large snowflake die: Sweet Dixie (as above)
4x small snowflakes: Cheery Lynn



I'm not sure two is enough, but it's a start, eh?

Thanks for looking

October Colour Combo

Gez has chosen the palette for our October Colour Combo challenge over on the Daring Cardmakers this week and lovely colours they are too.
I always find it a struggle to get back into crafting after a break, so I wasted quite a bit of time in paper-shuffling and ink dabbling this week before coming up with my card

I spent ages looking through papers for dolour matches, and then went mainly with plain card in the end.  I did use the RGB codes to print a piece of white Bazzill in the palest of the aqua shades and also the lemon colour as I couldn't find anything among my stash.

 Tools and Materials

Bazzill card, Coredinations card

Scrap of printed aqua card

2-tone organza ribbon

Cuttlebug Distressed Stripes embossing folder

Spellbinders leaf Swirl die

SU flower punch

Small circle punch

Printed sentiment

Here's the colour inspiration photo Gez gave us:

I was trying to achieve something like a gardenia for the flower, but I think I need a bit more practise - or maybe patience to let the crumpled petals dry naturally.  I'm not good at patience though....

As always the Daring Cardmakers Team have gorgeous things to share with you on the blog, so please take a minute to check them out

Thanks for looking

Speedy Gonzalez

Hi, it's my turn to post on the Get Funky and Craft Inspiration blog today  and it would be great if you'd pop over there to see (and leave comments on )  the fab projects made by the DT using Funky Hand goodies.

What with trying to get loads of stuff done before we went on holiday, and now dealing with the aftermath of said holiday its been a busy old time with crafting time in short supply.  So, just before we went away I thought I'd have a go at something I have never, ever found easy - 10 minute cards!

I didn't need to count printing time in my 10 minutes because as luck would have it I had some leftover bits of these Winter Wedding papers from Funky Hand lying on my desk - the only printing I needed to do was an extra A5 piece of the dark blue pinstripe  as I didn't have a piece big enough to make the background square

How easy is this card then?  I think these papers work so well for a geometric layout like this.

A big square, a smaller square and a little one to fix the monogram to.

The banner is just a rectangle with the points hand-cut, and the "brads" were made just with a small circle punch and shaped with an embossing ball tool.

The monogram is a chipboard sticker so no work there either.

I still had a few scraps so I thought I'd have another go

The 2 layers for the banner are made the same way as above.

The circle is a Spellbinders Nestie die

 I had a spare printed "Happy Birthday" sentiment left over from something else because I'd printed two in different fonts as I wasn't sure which I liked best for that project

 I'll admit that deciding to make a little rosette pushed this over the 10 minutes, but not by much.  It's just a strip of paper, scored using my scoring board, folded up quickly and glued onto a punched circle of card. 

 It didn't take long. 

The centre of the rosette is another punched circle (a bit larger than the ones on the first card), shaped with a ball tool again and glued in place

Probably took 15 minutes max to make this one

The reason I had the leftovers sitting on my desk was this little "ensemble" I shared here a couple of weeks ago

That's it for this time, thanks for visiting - please don't go without leaving a message, I'd love to hear from you ;)