Bailey's Box full of Treats

Hello all! I've had an overwhelming response for requests for the tutorial for my Bailey's Box and Snowman Soup Boxes, so I decided to make a blog post on them and simplify my life.

Here's a sampling of these boxes, with my original below:

They do come in two sizes, this box above that I will feature first, is 7.25" square and 2.25" deep. The smaller box in the photos is 5.5" square and 1.5" deep.

These are the items I included in the box, they were layered, so I took 2 photos for the full effect.

The top wrapped item is actually a package of Pirouette cookie sticks. The package below is a bunch of pouches of hot chocolate, and the little box is full of Bailey's truffles. The top package is marshmallows, of course. Now you may have noticed I have gone totally old school here! It's what I had on hand, what can I say. Though I do wish I could have made these with new products and submitted to SU!

So lets' get to creating this box.

You need a whopping 3 sheets of 12 x 12 CS, at least 2 in the same color and one complimentary (see the red and green box in the first photo on the page).

1. Cut ONE sheet to 11-3/4" x 11-3/4".

Cut 2 sheets to 12" x 7 1/4"

Use the remainder or the 2 sheets to cut them both at 7 1/4" long.

2. Score the cut down 12 x 12 (the sheet that is now 11.75 x 11.75) at 2 1/4" on every side:

3. Cut your flap edges as shown ( and fold up your edges and run the bone folder along them now too).

Now take your scraps that you cut down to 7 1/4" and score them. With the short side across and the long side down, score at 1 ¾”, 2 3/8” and 3”.

Fold in half along the middle line:

Grab the fold, and fold along the next fold lines together, so you form one 'lip' or edge':

Now put fast fuse or glue of choice all along one edge:

Lining up the box tab edge AND the lip edge to face INTO the box, adhere carefully to one side:

Now adhere to the other side:

Now glue up the other side, careful to avoid the small opening and adhere:

Your box will now look like this. Put more adhesive along the edges of the remaining box flap and tape it up. Repeat these steps for the other side.

Your box should look like the following 2 pictures:

Now it's time  to make your cover!

Now you need to get your 2 sheets that are cut to 7 ¼” x 12”. Score these both at 2 3/8” and 9 5/8”. Please note I goofed, so don’t be fooled by the double lines in my photo. You only need ONE line to do it right ;)

Now is the time to stamp the sheet that will form the top of the cover, so take one of the two sheets and decorate it as you wish. You are going to overlap the scored sheets on both sides, to create the closed cover. Note, I recommend paying attention when taping down, you want your decorated side to form a smooth fold and not have the overlap facing up, if you know what I mean. Look at the second picture down to see what I'm talking about. 

Picture this with top and sides decorated. There's no seam here, its facing the bottom of the box.

Your completed box, ready to decorate and tag!

Now for the Snowman Soup Box!

I make a new variation every year for my family to celebrate the first snowfall of the year. We live in the Canadian Rockies, surrounded by 6 national parks on all sides and go CRAZY when the snow hits. On go the gloves, the snowboards and snowmobiles come out and we are off to PLAY. So its a cherished celebration in our family. And on that note, we got our first big dump yesterday of a whole FOOT of snow! YAY!

Here is a sampling of the boxes I made for my family:

The insides: Contains one flavored hot chocolate (this one is Rolo, cause my little guy can't get enough of them), 2 Pim's orange cookies,a bag of marshmallows, Caramilk bar and Ghiardelli caramel square. The little white boxes have 2 Ferrerro Rochers in them. I would have liked to add candy canes, but there weren't any yet in stores :( 

So let's begin. Your base is a full sheet of standard CS. I’m using crumb cake. Score the 8.5" side at 1.5” and 7”. Flip and score the 11" side at 1 ¼”, 2 ¾”, 8 ¼” and 9 3/4”.

Now you need to cut your box sides so you can fold them in. Here’s a quick snap of this and the way you are going to fold your tabs in:

Now you need a slot to run your ribbon pull through. This is where you get to improvise. I used my super old tag punch to skim the edge off in the center. You can use any punch you think will work. To do this, fold up one side front piece (where the double score lines are) and punch through BOTH layers.

Voila, your slit!

Now you need to tape up your sides. I recommend taping all 4 at once and sticking them down after, as its hard to tape the remaining side when 2 have been stuck in place.

Take the glued edge and line it up with the edge of the box, then stick it down. Repeat with all sides. Note, you are only sticking it to the FIRST layer it lays against naturally. The folded over layer is to keep it all neat and tidy (and give strength to the box). I did find it handy to cut the edges of the flaps on the slit side diagonally to leave the ribbon free. You can see this 2 pictures down. And, if you were confused, this photo will help understand how to tape it together better!

How the box looks taped together when the sides have been cut a bit:

Now using a scrap of ribbon, fold it in half and push it through. Then use tear and tape and tape it over in a couple of places.

Pull these tops off the strip and add more adhesive to the flap edge so you can glue it down:

Finished look:

The finished base:

Now for the cover: Take another standard size sheet of CS and cut at 5.5" as if you were making 2 card bases.

Score at 1.5” and 7” on BOTH sheets. Now is the time you want to stamp or otherwise decorate your cs, so take the time to do that now if you are going to.

To tape it up: Tape lots of fast fuse to one side and then...

Layer the edges, leaving a small 1/8" underlap so it fits perfectly over the box. Again, try to tape in a way that the seams are pointed to the bottom of the box and not facing the top.

Your finished cover:

Your finished box, ready to decorate!

Thanks for reading and sharing :) I'd love to see photos of your creations, so if you email them to me I will add them to this blog post! 

~Weezie

One Big Meaning

Hey everybody.  Today I needed more thank you cards, there never seems to be enough.  I just received my One Big Meaning stamp set and wanted to play with it!  Here's what i came up with.  A little inspiration for your tuesday!  These are all made with the treat bag die cut from SU, with a matching 3.5 x 5" card, using very vanilla and timeless elegance DSP.  I have used black card stock as well as cherry cobbler in a few places.

This was my least favorite card starting out--wasn't crazy about the paper pattern but went with it anyway, and now it's my favorite.  Funny how that happens!  And of course, my reminder to stamp a message inside!

This uses vintage brads, cherry cobbler seam binding and gold sequin trim.

For this one I used sahara lace trim, vanilla and cherry cobbler seam binding and a something borrowed embellishment. 

This one uses the vanilla seam binding, sahara lace, and a vintage button.

I hope these inspire you to create something gorgeous today!  I will be featuring these in an upcoming class if you are interested.

Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!

~Weezie

Inspired...A 'Tin' of Cards

Hi everyone!  I'm sick of being sick at home!!!  On that note, I felt inspired and decided to bring you a FABULOUS tutorial today.

With the Tin of Cards kit being so successful that it's sold out, and a lot of requests at the farmer's market, I decided to design my own.

It's not a paper saving set, but I have never been much concerned with this as it stifles my creativity. I don't like limitations!  You need 3 sheets of paper for this, and can make the box for 3.5 x 5" cards or the standard 4 1/4 x 5.5" cards.  The choice is yours, however, you need 12" card stock to make the larger size, and I didn't have any current 12" card stock (in fact, mine is so old it's still the Bazzil style textured cs!) so I made a smaller version for littler cards (that uses standard 11" x 8 1/2" paper).  It's really cute:

So let me give you some dimensions to cut your sheets of paper.

For the smaller box, cut 2 sheets at 6 3/4" x 11" and cut one sheet at 7 5/8" x 4 7/8".
For the larger box, cut 2 sheets at 8"x 12" and one at 7 1/8 x 5 1/8.

Note to perfectionists like me: I will tell you now, the last measurement for each box is the lid.  I'm not going to lie, the lids have been tricky.  I have never had trouble with my old scoring device (it created a very thin sharp line), but the SU scoring tool scores very wide and for this reason, the lids seem to always be finicky. They are either too small or too big, with a difference of just 1/16" in scoring!  If you are NOT using the SU scoring plate, I suggest you cut at 7 9/16" x 4 13/16" or 7 1/16" x 5 1/16" for the larger box.

If you cut with SU Simply Scored (Which I do absolutely love) then cut the larger size and be prepared to cut the other half of that sheet of paper in a smaller size to fit if needed.  I'm just telling you now because I had to do this twice and the only difference I can account for it the scoring method.  I do love my simply scored tool, I think its fantastic--its just something you need to be aware of.

So--enough perfectionism--on to the project!

Score your lid at 1" on each side.

Score your box pieces at 

(for 3.5 x 5) 2 3/4" and 8 1/4"

(for 4.25 x 5.5) 3" and 9"

Pretty simple stuff.

Stamp it all over with Versamark and add your embossing powder.  I am using a stamp from Choose Happiness.

  The finished heat embossed pieces.  Notice on the bottom one I didn't stamp the box bottom.  I'm almost out of white embossing powder and you aren't going to see it anyway.

So you now have 2 matching pieces.  Make 2 straight cuts as above in the picture.  This is where I realize I didn't photograph the lid as I was cutting/gluing.  Oops, more on that debacle later!

Pick which piece will be the front, because you want to glue and layer so the seams are on the back edges of the sides.  Glue up an edge.  I'm using some crazy xtreme glue stick my kids brought home from school. Small town, glue sucks here!

Layer one side over the other and adhere, pressing firmly.  It will look as below when overlapped.

Now I folded the box flat to glue the next side.  I just folded the flap over and pressed it down.

Now glue the 2 bottom flaps thoroughly so the box is firm on the bottom.

Press it against the back flap.

Add glue to the bottom of the box and press the front flap flat (sheesh!) against the box.

From the inside, press down on the flaps well so it all glues nicely.

Ta da, it's ready to decorate.  But wait, I didn't tell you how to make the lid!!!

Haha--I amaze myself sometimes.  Ok, looking at the lid paper as it is positioned on the box in this photo, cut 2 slits on each side to the score line, front of paper edge toward back of box (I hope this makes sense).  If you screw it up and cut the narrow sides, it's not a big deal--you'll just see the seams from the front (in this way, you don't).  Glue the tabs down and it's done.  

This is where you now test the fit of your lid before you continue on.  If it doesn't fit, adjust the cut according to the issue and start over.  (make it bigger or smaller!)

Now it's time to get creative.  I used sticky strip and started to use glue dots--which you totally can for the next parts--but a glue gun is so much easier!  I would still use the sticky strip for this next part (so you don't glue and burn your fingers) but jump to the glue gun next if you have one.

So sticky strip the whole box front edge, right along the lip.

Using seam binding, hand gather by pressing loosely onto the strip.  Only peel off a bit of the red at a time--do yourself a favor!

This is where the glue guns gets handy.  Hot glue the sequin trim down, all the way around the box.  Notice in both the above pictures that I start at the back of the box.  If you're new to boxing, this is useful advice.  Everyone else--just ignore me!

Now I drag out my fun bits.  in this case, vintage SU copper twine (so old!!!), sahara lace trim, pretty flowers from Michaels (I was going to make paper flowers with a punch and you can too--I just liked these better) and then all my embellishments, since I didn't know what I was going to come up with at the time.  Layer the flowers/embellishments the way you want them and hot glue them down however makes you happy.

I glued my lace down in a rough circle, bunching and gathering to create a nice shape, then glued down the copper twine and then glued the flowers on top.

Now cut your file tabs.  For the small box, I cut them 4" x 5 3/8" then ran them through the big shot with the file tabs edgelits. 

The files fit perfectly and are ready for stamping and adding cards!

A view from the front:

And a view from the top:

The smaller box is 2 3/4" deep and the larger one is 3".  The size is really bound by the paper.  Because of the way the paper is layered and glued, the box is very strong.  I really like it, I'm excited to offer it to my class as a project whenever I'm feeling better.  And, I can sell them at the markets when people ask for card boxes.  I'm thinking of filling this one with about 10 sweet little cards in pink pirouette, crumb cake and whisper white with treat bag envelopes.  That will be so adorable!

Anyway, thanks for dropping by and I hope you enjoyed!  Please do let me know if you have any questions or difficulties.  My mind is a bit off since I *still* have this fever, and it's possible there's an error somewhere!

Have a wonderful Sunday!

~Weezie