Photo Explosion Box

Back in December, I held a Photo Explosion Box class at my house. These boxes are so cute and I love how many pictures you can fill them with. I tried to keep the colors sort of Christmasy, but not Christmasy at the same time...does that make sense? Basically they were made for Christmas presents, but I wanted them to be out all year long. This was a perfect gift to give to my Mom and Mom-in-Law as they go away for the winter and miss seeing my son during that time. I think they cried a little when they got them.



The box consists of the box base, box lid, and the insert so you can add pictures. This box will hold up to 12 pictures...but I only placed 8 in there. I got the quote out of a book of quotes that I got from Jo-Anns a long time ago...just retyped it and formatted it to fit in the area I wanted it. I really love the Black & White photos. It just seems to make them more striking! And I got the Doodle This stamp set mainly to make the pop-up flower on the top of the box...love it!







Anyway, if any of you want the instructions that I wrote out for my attendees, let me know and I can email it to you. Of course, this is not my design...got the idea and basic instructions from SCS.

Edited to Add: I am happy to fulfill the requests to send my instructions that I had at my class to anyone that wants them, but please make sure that I can either get your email from your blog or that you leave me an email! I have gotten a quite a few comments asking me to send them the instructions and I have no way of contacting them. I never get to see nor have access to the "email" that you enter when leaving a comment...you have to actually add it in the comment area. Or just send me an email directly...my email is listed on the left sidebar below the "About Me" section. Thanks!!

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Doodle This; Inks - Always Artichoke, Perfect Plum, Baroque Burgundy; Cardstock - Mellow Moss, Always Artichoke, Perfect Plum, Baroque Burgundy, Vellum paper; Accessories - Burgundy 5/8" Grosgrain ribbon, White 1/4" grosgrain ribbon (dyed Perfect Plum), Ice Circle Rhinestone Brad, eyelets, White Gel pen; Supplies - Dimensionals, Sticky Strip, scissors, cutter with scoring blade, bone folder,

A Christmas Planner

I wanted to show off the gifts that I gave my Stamp Camp attendees. I was pretty proud of them, even though they took a bit longer than I expected!

I wish I could take credit for these great planners, but alas I CASEd the idea from a variety of sources. Deb from Blue Moon Stamping made a planner (I think one of the first ones) for a more general purpose, while Jan from Stamp, Paper, Scissors and Shannon from Stamp Till You Cramp made Holiday ones. I picked up stuff from all and created my version. The titles I used are Cards, Receipts, Gifts, and Misc.

Basically take a plain white folder and open it up. Fold the left and ride sides into the center and crease tightly. Reverse the middle fold and you have yourself a little book with pockets.

I only have so much patterned paper, so I used the retired snowflake from Little Layers II to decorate 4 different colors of cardstock along with one of the backgrounds from Itty Bitty Backgrounds. These were then accented with gold brads. Nothing fancy, but I like how it turned out....this is probably where having patterned paper would make things faster! Oh well!

I grabbed a cool font from Simply the Best Fonts website (free!) and made a couple of lists and a little calendar to include in my Christmas Planner. I create mine in Excel to make sure it was formatted the way I wanted it, but the same could be made in Word or something.

Want to know how to get one of these for yourself?? Stay tuned in the next few days! I am going to be announcing a special blog candy that will hopefully uplift some special people during a hard time.

The Engineering Details: Stamps - Little Layers II, Itty Bitty Backgrounds, Quirky Alphabet Lower; Cardstock - Elegant Eggplant, Night of Navy, Certainly Celery, Brocade Blue, Whisper White; Ink - Elegant Eggplant, Night of Navy, Certainly Celery, Brocade Blue, Whisper White Craft; Accessories - Gold Eyelets, Light Blue Wide Organdy Ribbon (Joann's), Sparkly White ribbon (no idea where it is from); Supplies - White folder, envelope, Crop-A-Dile

A Photo Book Fit for a Dad

Why is it that stamping something for men is so difficult! I struggled with this one for a long time. I had a few customers that requested that I put together a photo book for a Father's Day Gift. Obviously I am not very timely about showing it, but I just got started with this blogging thing just recently. Anyway, I had many iterations of this photo book and I am pretty happy with the end result. I had a stamp camp in June for people to make this book.

The first two photos are the front and back of the book. The front is stamped and embellished and I inked up my son's hand to get a hand print on the back. He walked around with a brown palm for a bit, but he was fine! The Joy on the front was embossed. We actually did it the cheap way (without a craft pad). Since I don't have a lot of Craft pads, we just inked the stamp with Versamark first and then ink it with the color of ink desired. Stamp the image and emboss like normal. Makes it easy to get nice colors for the embossing without owning all of the craft pads.

I had originally started the front without the Brocade Blue cardstock on the front, but found once it was added, that it finally felt complete.

The pictures below show the inside of the photo book. It is an accordion fold book that is great because my husband can stand it up open on his desk at work. Who wouldn't want to have that cute little boy staring back at you all day?!

Since I did this book for a stamp camp, I have directions typed up, but I am not sure how to post documents yet....so just email me if you want the directions. Unfortunately, it does not include pictures, but it is a step-by-step type of directions.