Exploding Greeting Card Box with Melissa Baldwin Owner of www.TheStampingStudio.com

 

This may just look like a cool decorative box (which it is!) but it also is a Greeting Card Holder.
For this project you will need to cut; 1 - 9x9" cardstock/pattern cardstock (I am using BasicGrey's Blush collection for this whole project. It is cardstock weight and perfect for this.) 4 - 5x11" cardstock/pattern cardstock 4 - lengths of ribbon. I am using the May Arts ribbon that reads "With Love"

Take the 9x9 cardstock and score it 2 inches on all four sides. I love using these large see-thru quilting rulers as it makes the job quick and easy!
Fold on the scored lines.


Start on the left side and make a cut on the fold line as shown. Do the same thing on the right side.

Fold the flaps inside and glue to make the top of your box. You will want to use a nice permanent adhesive for this, like O'so Sticky tape or I used my ATG Gun and that worked great.



Now you have a box lid!
.
Now let's make the sides of the box. Score all four of your 5x11" pieces of cardstock at 5".


Now all you have to do is glue one on top of each other with the short ends in the middle creating the bottom of the box, and then the longer pieces will be the sides of the box.

They will be glued together in a cross shape.



Now fold up the sides and slip the top on, just to see how the box comes together.
Whala!... it really is a box. Now wasn't that easy?



Now what we are going to work on is to adhear ribbon to each side of the box, that the cards and envelopes will slip under and keep in place. Thus it becomes a Card Holder in a Box. How great is that?! So you will want to mark with a pencil about 2.5" up from the middle fold of the box. I penciled a mark on each side.
I decided to use glue dots to adhear my ribbon, but I did not have much room for these so what I did was to roll up the glue dot so that is was nice and thin. (You could also use staples to adhear the ribbon if you wanted.)

Just like so. Do this on all sides of the box.
Here is that step all completed.


Now you can place cards on two sides of the box, and envelopes on the other two sides.
Now let's do a dry run and fold it all up again, leaving the ribbon tails sticking out and then they can be tied.




Now let's decorate the inside of the box... well actually the bottom. Let's make a 3-D flower with the hearts from the TSS178 Collage Hearts stamp set. Stamp five hearts and cut out, for the bottom layer of the flower and glue down as shown.
Cut out 4 more hearts for the top layer and bend them as shown.


Then place a 3-D glue dot or foam pop dot behind the flower petal, then glue down. This will give it dimension, and just look cool!
Side view.




Add a button to the center (or any embellishment you would like) and there ya go.
Looks great hugh?



Now let's have some fun with our velvet flowers. These are so pretty and elegant.
Let's make this for the top of the box. It consists of velvet flowers and a drawer pull.  
First thing to do is to make a hole. I used a paper piercer and then realized that I needed a much bigger hole to get my screw for the drawer pull, through.
Then I snipped the center with my scissors and ended up shoving my scissor tips through the whole thing. I am sure there is a better way to do this, but this is how I got the job done. :)
Finally the screw fits through the velvet flower. But take it back out as the screw actually has to go through the box from the underside.
Make a hole through in the center of the box lid with a paper piercer. I just eye-balled it but you can sure measure if you would like.
Then push your screw up through the inside of your box.
Then push your flowers on top through the screw.
Then place the drawer pull on the screw and tighten that puppy up.
Decorate the sides of your box anyway you would like. I used scraps of the Blush pattern cardstock and stamped the hearts in black on more scraps and glued them down as shown.
Want to decorate the box lid even more? Great!... cut some 1.5 x 1.5 squares of pattern cardstock and cut them in half on the diagonal
I used two colors and glued the brown pieces down first.
And then put another row of striped pieces behind that. I love how this looks! This does not show it, but also glued some ribbon around the sides of the box lid as well. (See next photo)
Here is the finished box. I had so much fun making this project I am going to go make some more! This box can be adjusted to make other sizes. All you have to do is to make sure the box lid and the bottom are the same size. So let's say that you wanted a 3" square box, you would make the lid 5" square and score 2" on each side. Then you would make your sides 8x3" and score each side at 3". I hope you will have just as much fun as I did with these.