Crafting for sanity? Or insanity?: It's The Little Things November SOTM Blog Hop

Friday, October 31, 2014

It's The Little Things November SOTM Blog Hop

Welcome to the It's The Little Things November 2014 Close To My Heart Stamp Of The Month Blog Hop. We are so happy that you could join us. There are over 60 bloggers participating this month. If you just happened upon my blog post, clicking the link (near the bottom of each post) will take to the next blog so you can go the full circle.

You should have arrived here from ***Katie Hessel's blog Zig and Zag***. Please note that if you ever get lost along the way, a complete list of participants can be found at Melinda Everitt's If You Bling It.

The SOTM for November 2014, It's The Little Things, is a set of 15 stamps that is only $5 with a qualifying purchase.

I have had several ideas on my mind before I decided to make "place cards"/treat boxes for Thanksgiving dinner. I am not certain where the idea for this came from — the inspiration was not a conscious decision, but after I decided on what I was creating and looked around for cut sizes I was reminded of Kathy Corson's project for the September SOTM. There is also the Corporate-created "cracker box" that might have subconsciously influenced me. Honestly, my first idea was to CASE the Corporate-created square card (you can see photos of both Corporate created projects here) and create a canvas; I purchased the canvas and a shadow box for it to be displayed in a few weeks ago.

After stamping the images using both first and second generation stamping, I cut them out. I used a square of Kraft cardstock (about 1 inch; it does not have to be perfect since it will be covered) as a base to build my floral spray on. I "wrinkled" and manipulated the paper to make the edges of the flowers and leaves look more realistic. I used foam tape and Liquid Glass to build the spray. I did not stamp on or otherwise decorate the box because I wanted the floral spray to be the focus of the place cards.

I have not decided what kind of candies I will put in my boxes. I would love to hear your ideas. I have some clear food-safe bags leftover from a Valentine's Day bake sale donation so the candies do not need to be in a wrapper.

Before you visit the next stop on the hop, ***Judy Faye Garner's Judy Faye's Place***, additional information about how my project was created is below. If you have a moment to comment, I would love to know what you think of my Thanksgiving place cards.

I cut the "pie slice", the 3D Object found on page 70 of the Artiste Handbook, using my Cricut Explore and Design Space (it is image #M3ADEE). My finished box is approximately 4⅛" from the point to the "crust". Unfortunately I do not remember how I came up with the sizing; I think I just added the grid to my mat and tried to get the size between the score lines to 4 inches.

While it looked like two full boxes should fit on one mat, no matter what I tried (I did not try attaching the pieces to a canvas until writing this blog post; attaching to a 12" x 12" canvas resolved this), I could not place two full boxes (top and bottom) on one mat. If I told Design Space to print two projects, I was always prompted for two mats, so I used this workaround:

On the Mat Preview screen I rotated the box top 180 degrees and moved it below the box bottom as shown above. When the machine finished cutting the first bottom and top, I did not click Finish on my computer screen, instead I used the arrow on the Explore to eject the mat. Then I turned the mat 180 degrees (similar to how you might manually print double-sided). I inserted the mat and pressed the "C" to cut again. This way I could get two bottoms and two tops from one 12" x 12" sheet of cardstock.

I cut the 3D Object from 12" x 12" Kraft Cardstock (Z1375). I set the dial on the Explore to Light Cardstock +.

Products used, all from Close To My Heart: