Christmas... already?

How are you all this week?  Do you feel those Christmassy feelings of warmth and goodwill sweeping over you yet? The burning desire to get the tinsel out and the mulled wine cooking? No?? Well who can blame you, Christmas is fast approaching but with some lovely sunny days I must admit I am being consumed by Autumn loveliness! The stunning autumn colours and the falling leaves.  All that aside however as a crafter we have to think about Christmas far too early.  I know many who have been making since way before the school holidays!  I thought I would share my latest Christmas venture with you all.

I was introduced to Christmas Eve boxes a few months back. It seems something that originated in America and goes hand in hand with the 'Elf on the Shelf'.  Don't worry if you are new to Elf on the Shelf too.  The general idea in a nutshell, is you have a small toy elf who arrives on the 1st December.  He watches your children everyday and reports back to Santa every night to tell him if they have been good or not! When the elf returns in the morning he gets up to a little mischief.  He may spill cereal all over the counter or tie your shoe laces together etc. (this is where parents have fun and get creative!)  Then on Christmas Eve the elf leaves to go and help Santa sort out the toys and load the sleigh.  When the elf goes he leaves behind a Christmas Eve box, a box full of treasures.  Usually these treasures seem to consist of a Christmas film, book, slippers, new pyjamas and a few yummies to enjoy while watching your film.  Well my pondering took me to... what if the Christmas box contained lots of crafting goodies!!! How about instead of being full of food and dvd's etc that it contained tutorials and craft supplies to create some Christmas crafting memories.  So I give you the Crafty Night Before Christmas box!

Each box contains at least three tutorials, all the crafty supplies you need to complete them and lots extra and a small handmade gift from me to you!  I have designed 4 different boxes based on ages.  There is the under 5's, 5+, teenager and adult.  I am also more than happy to personalised.

Well I'm off to carry on planning my boxes. If you want to found out more or take a peek at my brand new kit box v visit www.craftywhatnots.com

I'm stopping off to visit all those lovely blogs at Handmade Monday so why not pop over and see what others have been up to.

 Xxx

Ready..... Steady..... Nearly go!

OOOOh ... so excited! I'm nearly ready to open the virtual doors on my new website.  I've been busy creating new wonders to stock those cyber shelves and very soon the world will be host to yet another online crafty shop!  Jennysis will not only have ready made products to buy but also all the materials for you to give them a go yourself!

Here is a sneaky peak at the 'New Bloom' range

Plain A6 notebooks.

Circle or stripy buttons

There will be all sorts of other things including the paper pads I use to create them.

The other range I will be opening with is 'New Leaf'  I just love the earth tones and sparkly papers.

This little set of notecards will either come premade in a small box or come as a kit with instructions!  I have made one for the 'New Bloom' range too but do you think I can find the photo?????

I particualry love these little draws.  Even my little'ns toy sheep managed to make an appearance!

Well I can hear the subtle crys of a waking baby so better go and de-craft the house super quick before I end up with glue on the ceiling!

Happy crafting all you wonderful people!  Thanks for stopping by my page.  I would love to hear your thoughts on my products, would be good to get some feedback before launching into the big bad world!

Am popping over to Handmade Harbour to checkout some of the wonderful talent out there.

xxx

Origami box tutorial

Here's a little Wednesday tutorial treat for you! The very versatile and easy Origami box.

Yes I know I said easy ... at least it is in practice but it is a little hard to explain so hopefully the pictures will do most of the talking for me!

First off you will need a sheet of paper, a ruler and a pen (either a ballpoint or sharp pencil)

I used a 6x6" inch paper here.  It will create a 2.1"x 2.1" box.

1.  There are different techniques for this box.   All of them seemed to result in an unsightly cross on the base which I didn't like at all so this is my version.  You will first need to lightly draw a line diagonally from corner to corner like the image above.

2.  Now fold one corner up so that the point is touching the cross you just drew.

3. Repeat last step with the remaining 3 corners until you have a piece that looks like the above image.

4.  Now fold the left side of your piece into the centre and then the right side.  Both sides should meet in the middle. ( you will need to make sure the paper underneath doesn't travel as you fold.  the points need to remain in the centre.)

5. Now open up the folds you just made as well as the points on the left and right side so you are left with this. Now at this point you can stick down the top and bottom points before you move on.

6.  Now you need to fold the bottom edge up.  Conveniently there is a line (which you drew in step 1) to line the edges up to.  Now repeat with the top edge.

7.  open the last folds you made.  you will need to score or in this case I drew using a biro along the bottom right part of the triangle.  Just like the above image.  Repeat on all four bottom parts of the triangles.  This will make folding easier.

8. You will need to fold the lines you just scored in such a way that you recreate the image above (hard to explain I'm afraid,  much easier to show.)

9.  you are aiming to fold the right point over so that it sits inside the box.  Once in place you can glue or tape there if you wish.

10. repeat on other side.

Now you should have a box.  If you wish to make a box with lid then you need to cut a piece of paper half an inch wider each way.  In this case I made a smaller one to fit inside.  It was 5.5" square.

Then all that is left is to decorate!! 

Other ideas are to keep making progressively smaller boxes like Russian dolls!  I started with 8x8" paper and kept going until I used 2x2" paper! (got very fiddly!)

We will need this box for future tutorials so thought it would be good to do early on!

xxx

Exploding boxes tutorial

Wonderful Wednesday...what shall we make today????

Well today's tutorial is how to make an exploding box!  At fist glance it looks like a plain old box but....

...take off the lid and the inside opens out to reveal a cluster of flowers!

You could do all sorts and there are plenty of other designs out the if you search.  This tutorial is just to show you a two level box.

1.  This design only uses 3 sheets of paper.  I have chosen double sided for two of them (these will be the main box) and the third is super glittery!  All the sheets are from the same paper pad and measure 12x12".

2.  Start by measuring 4" in from each corner and then joining the lines up to form 9 even squares.  I have used a pen so you can see the lines but ideally you should either use a pencil or score directly onto the card so that you can't see it when you are finished.

3.  You now need to cut the four corner squares out.  You should be left with this cross shape.

4.  Next take your second piece of paper, this will be the inner box.  This will need to be smaller than the one we have just done so cut your 12x12" paper down to 9x9".  Now measure 3" in from each corner and score along the lines before cutting out the four corner squares like before.

5.  I used a corner punch to round my corners off but you could leave them pointed.  Turn your smaller cross over and attach double sided tape to the middle square.  Now stick the smaller cross into the centre of the bigger one like above.

6.  Now we will need to do the lid.  You will need to cut your paper down to  7 1/8" square.  Next step is to mark out 11/2" in from each corner.  Now score your lines (I have used pen so you can see them)

7.  You need to cut along 4 lines now, one from each corner and going along one edge of each corner square.  Fold all lines well.  Hopefully you should have something like the above picture.

8.  Turn your paper over so the pattern is facing you.  Each corner has now become a tab.  You need to use glue or double sided tape on each of the four tabs and then stick so that the lid is formed like above.

9.  Now get creative! let yourself go wild!  In this box you can see that I cut down the square sections of card I removed from the crosses, cut them down and stuck them on each cross (I turned them around for a coordinating colour)  I also used some of the card we dis-guarded to make flowers.   

I used thin acetate strips to make the flowers pop out in  centre and popped sticky gems in the middle of each flower.

In order to make some of the box panels stand up when open I curled up some card and stuck it behind two of the sections.  This means that when the box is open and sitting on a table it doesn't go completely flat, adding a little more depth.

For the lid I wrapped a ribbon around the edge and then stuck a layered flower in the centre over the seem.

Here are a few other exploding boxes I have made recently as a bit of inspirations.  

This box is filled with photos to flip through!

This box has 9 layers in all, the middle one also has it's own lid so you can hide another little treat in there!