Self-closing Box

Hello, Crafters.

I hope everyone is safe after the South Coast here in the UK was battered by Storm Angus overnight. This morning I uploaded my
Self-closing Box video onto YouTube. 

I decided to make this video because this
is such an unusual but easy to make box.
I first made one of these in October
last year for a class. 

Last week, when I was getting myself organised  for
the craft show I was doing on Saturday, I decided to sort through my box of
handmade boxes so I could have a display of gift boxes for sale and I found two
self closing boxes. 

Last Saturday was a very successful day for selling gift boxes – I sold lots of them including my two
self-closers.

I have another Christmas Fair on 1st December so I decided to make some
more and then my thoughts went to a video!
 

Photograph 1 & 2 – this is the
first box I made yesterday and I followed Frenchie’s – France Martin – instructions for
sizes. 

I love the sentiment I’ve used on this box, which is from the Jar of
Cheer Stamp Set and very appropriate for a gift box!

Photograph 3 – this is the
second box I made, which is the same as the first one except I cut the squares
of This Christmas Specialty Designer Series Paper (DSP) an eighth of an inch
bigger i.e. 3 7/8” square as opposed to 3¾” square. 
 
I prefer the narrower gap
the larger pieces of DSP leave – so it’s down to you which effect you like best.

I made a mistake when
cutting this box in as much as I mitred the top corner when I removed the small
oblong! 

You can see my error at the top of the box on the right-hand side.

Another mistake I made on this box is that I used Real Red Ink and cardstock but I should have used Charry Cobbler! DOH!

Fortunately, this will be a lot easier to remedy! 

Photograph 4 & 5 – I used Fancy
Frost Specialty DSP to make this box.

I heat embossed the same sentiment using
Silver Embossing Powder on Whisper White Cardstock and layered it onto Silver Foil. 

I really love this box and
think it’d be excellent for wedding favours, especially with the added bells’ trinket!

Photograph 6 – as far as decoration is concerned, I don’t think this box looks finished and I’m going to add more decoration to it today. 

However, the object of the exercise was to see how easy it would be to
decorate the box with stamped or heat-embossed images, and would it be alright to leave it until after the scoring had been done. 

The answer is yes and it turned out to be very easy! 

As soon as I had finished the scoring, I wiped over the cardstock with
my Embossing Buddy, and stamped the images using Versamark. 

Then I sprinkled Gold
Embossing Powder over the stamped images and heat set.
Photograph 7 – this is the
box I made during the video and I used Presents & Pinecones  DSP.
 

Photograph 8 – this is the
box I made for my class a year ago!
 

The very nature of the
design of this box does result in the base being very slightly  warped – you have not made a mistake! 

The box
still sits on the table beautifully.

That’s about it for today. I wish you a happy Sunday.

Until tomorrow, happy crafting.

JanB.