Up, Up and Away Club Scrap Blog Hop!

Well, well . . . seems that my blogging focus has been over at Club Scrap Creates these days! Had to dust off the cobwebs over here. Just so 'ya know, I'm still crafting efficiently!

Special thanks to my favorite crafty Dutch pal, Hetty Sanders, for helping us launch the blog hop.

Without further ado, I've had a prototype of this project on my desk since the end of December. Cute, isn't it?

I thought it might be fun to do with the Up, Up and Away Unmounted FontArt.

You could make this in a pinch if you were desperate for a last-minute gift. I always seem to be in that situation. You?

So, easy steps. I'm not even going to sketch this out for you. You'll be fine. But I've got a couple of good assembly tips for 'ya.

1. Start with a 12x12" sheet of Up, Up & Away printed paper. Hold it on edge to determine the grain direction. Which way does it dip the deepest?

Can you see it? The paper is more, um, "dippy" in the first photo. After rotating the paper and holding it on a neighboring edge, it's more stiff and straight.

Drop the paper into the trimmer with the dip running left to right. Trim at 5.5". So, that's a really verbose way of saying, "Trim a 12x12 to 5.5x12." You can get two out of each 12x12 by trimming at 11 and 5.5".  (The technical name for this cut would be grain short.)

2. Use your favorite tool to score the paper vertically at 1/2, 1-3/4, 3 and 4-1/4". Score horizontally at 1.5 and 10.5".

3. It will be difficult to see the score lines if you're using a printed paper. Make a pencil mark to indicate the location of the intersecting score lines to that you can see where to place stamped images.

4. Mount that awesome border stamp onto a CS Grid Ruler. Check to make sure it's properly aligned and stamp within a marked area with Fuchsia ink.

5. If you're still in the mood, keep stamping! I added a second border stamped in Lagoon ink, and some balloons in Orchid ink. No need to stamp onto the 1/2" scored area. It will be tucked away.

6. Ready for some freestyle cutting? Use a scissors to remove the two 1/2 x 1-1/2" corners created by the intersecting score lines. Then cut along the three remaining long score lines from the outside edges to the intersecting score. This will create three tabs.

7. Next, snip away about half of the first and third tabs on each side.

9. Punch a hole into the four remaining long tabs.

10. Place the paper right side up on your work surface, and add a strip of adhesive to the narrow 1/2" flap along the outer edge.

11. Rather than try to form the box at this point, simply turn the paper over and fold up the 1/2" tab with the adhesive exposed. Then, simply fold the paper in half so that the edges line up.

12. Form the shape of the box.

13. Tuck in the short tabs. Squeeze together the long tabs.

14. This was the part where I thought it would be more efficient to just punch both holes at the same time at this stage of the game rather than back at step 9. And efficiency is what I'm all about. Except this time the efficiency is hindsight. So I took a fake picture of the step that never occurred.

15. Close the tabs with a ribbon. Or a twist tie. Or whatever else you can think of. But first, put something fun inside.

Leave a comment below with an idea of what you might put inside this adorable little box, and I'll enter your name in a drawing to get a prize sent to you! The space inside the box is roughly 1.25" square by 9" long. I have lots of ideas, but I'm curious to know what you'd do!!!

Thanks for hopping along with us. Your next stop is at Craft Chaos!

http://craftchaos.blogspot.com

Up, Up & Away!
Tricia