Birthday Beer Box

My boyfriend's Dad's birthday was this past weeked and as part of his present we'd bought him a few bottles of beer. Andrew asked me if I could do something with the bottles to make them look a bit more 'gifty'.

All I needed was a cereal box to make this birthday beer box. Ok...and some extra card and paper. But mostly a cereal box.

First I cut the cereal box to the height I wanted. The cereal box happened to be just the right width to fit the bottles in. I measured the length of the three bottles and cut the box accordingly, using the excess to make a new side on the open end.

As the bottles were quite heavy I used some corrugated card to reinforce the cereal box. I cut four pieces of card and stuck them to the inside of the box.

 To decorate the box I cut some brown packaging paper to fit around it.

Before I stuck the paper to the box I wrote the message. To make it look fancy I just googled 'birthday calligraphy' and traced it straight from the screen. I used a black felt tip to go over the outline and then fill it in.

I think it's a great way to make gifting bottles a bit more special. Perfect for a Dad. But if it was my Dad the box would be filled with ginger beer!

Animal Sock Boxes

First craft in my new flat!

My Mum retired at Easter and has been spending some of her free time crocheting up a storm. She came up with the idea for these boxes, which are made by crocheting around sturdy muffin cases, and left it up to me to make them cute.

I used felt to add on the features. This green one started off as a crocodile but now I think it looks more like a dragon.

To make these into sellable gifts my Mum had the idea to put a pair of socks inside, which double up as the animal's tongue.

What do you think? She's also made a pink and a purple one - what animals could they be??

Plastic Canvas Box

On my last trip to the Scrap Store I picked up a handful of small squares of plastic canvas. I thought they'd be perfect to make a box with.

I'd also recently discovered this pack of embroidery thread that  I don't remember buying. 36 for £2? Such a bargain. These were just what I needed.

 I haven't used plastic canvas before, and I haven't done cross stitch in a very long time so after trawling Pinterest for pattern ideas I decided on a simple chevron pattern.

Note: This photo is of the first square I sewed. After that one I made sure all my cross stitches were facing the same way.

 The sewing took a week (and all the episodes of Married at First Sight) but I finally got all six sides sewn.

Then it was time to assemble the box by sewing the edges together, trying to keep the cross stitch pattern.

I lined the inside of the box with pink felt which I glued in place then sewed round the top edge.

I'm pretty proud of my attempt at plastic canvas cross stitchery!

Christmas Card Boxes

More Christmas craft fair preparation!

These boxes are made from last year's Christmas cards

There's quite a lot of steps to making these and I did the first one back in March; cutting out the squares from the Christmas cards and sorting them into sets of 12. 6 for the outside and 6 for the inside of the box.

Then I layer a square of plastic, a Christmas card square, a regular card, Christmas card square, and a plastic square. I paper clip these together and hand them over to my Mum who works her crochet magic and constructs the box.

For selling these are craft fairs I buy a big tub or two of celebrations, when they're on sale, and package up a handful in cellophane to go in the box. Instant gift!

I've also done a few with little packets of Haribo in to appeal to the child market, but according to Haribo's marketing kids and grown-ups should love them so.

Have any of you started thinking about Christmas presents yet?

Pig Pot

Talking about those little papier mache boxes reminded me of this one I decorated when I was maybe 10 or 11.

It's a pig pot! Made with pom-poms, googly eyes, pipe cleaners and funky foam.

Inspired by the pig I made these two a few years ago to be featured in Creative Steps magazine.

I bought a whole pack of those big yellow pop-poms and haven't used another one since...

This is a really fun activity and I bet the boxes could be made into any animal.

Bros for life.

Cross Stitch Heart Box

As previously mentioned, I love the papier mache box section in Hobbycraft, but I can't buy any more until I do something with the stash I have.

I remembered seeing an image of a similar box which had been stitched through - but it was so long ago I can't remember where to link to - which is how I got this cross-stitch idea.

I've got square, oval, circle, and hexagon shaped boxes but I thought a cross-stitched heart on a heart shaped box would be cute. It would have been even cuter in February...

I started by googling 'cross-stitch heart pattern' and printing one out the same size as the lid of my box. I placed the pattern on the lid and poked a hole through the corners of the squares.

Using a double strand of red embroidery thread I got cross-stitching, something I haven't done for years.

The back was kind of messy, as it can get with cross-stitch, so I cut out a piece of card and stuck it to the inside of the lid.

To finish the box I stuck a piece of matching red felt to the inside of the box.

I love that this was such a quick and easy project.

Any other ideas of how to decorate my little boxes?

Pin it!

Flower Box

I love the papier mache box section in Hobbycraft. I bought this box that looks like a book years ago and have only just got round to doing something with it.

I got inspiration after seeing this jewellery box on Almost Makes Perfect. I liked the simple flower image on a clean, white background.

I just googled 'pink flower' to find an image to paint from. I actually surprised myself with how well I painted this, as I used acrylic paint and I'm more confident painting detail with oils.

I finished it off by lining the inside of the box with this bright pink velvet.