Washi Tape Berry Boxes

Easter isn't too far away now so in a spirit of preparation and not leaving everything to the last minute I have been thinking about Easter gift ideas.

I discovered a very simple tutorial for making super cute little Berry Boxes by Claire on her lovely blog Fellow Fellow. You know when you find a blog that is just so pretty and full of lovely things and you want to stay all day? That's Fellow Fellow (you should definitely check it out - once you've finished here of course!)
Be warned - once you start making these cute little boxes it gets pretty addictive!
I followed Claire's instructions, with just a few adjustments (I'm sorry I just can't help myself) and made this cute little box. 

Then I started to play and replaced the top paper band with Washi Tape. I also made my boxes slightly shorter. Seriously, once I started I just couldn't stop, they only take about 10 minutes each!

 

This is what I did:

Using a pencil & ruler I marked out my grid on card, cut it out and scored, then folded up the sides

I took my Washi tape and carefully started sticking it to the top edge. 

At the corner I left a little gap and then carried on

Once I got back to the beginning I just did a little overlap, shame the pattern doesn't match better, but it's not too bad

Now the only tricky bit, I applied Washi Tape to the inside too. The trick is to go slow and not unwind masses of tape too soon. The tape is pretty good at letting you unpeel and have another go if it puckers though.

And that's it! Now make loads more!

I also had a go with ribbon, I just applied some of that roll-on double sided tape. It looks good but was more fiddly than Washi tape as it kept sticking to itself.

There must be a million uses for cute little boxes like this. To turn them into Easter gift baskets for our numerous nieces & nephews I made some little matching gift tags (made from the square corner offcuts and a little more tape) 

A bit of tissue paper and some mini eggs to finish off.

They are teeny (5cmx5cm) and hold about 8 mini eggs. We do have a lot of nieces and nephews, if I made bigger boxes it would cost a fortune to fill them all! I have got a few more to do now but they are quick and fun so don't feel too sorry for me!

You might also be interested in:

Patchwork Gift Box

Using Sketches for Card Making

Personalised Wedding Picture

Simple Speech Bubble Cards

I'll be linking up this project at all these lovely link parties, pop over for a look at loads of projects from other blogs

Bangle Storage Idea

Just a quick idea today. 

How do you store Bangles?

My bangles were in a right mess. I kept them in a shoe box - oh dear!

I love bangles, I have a few from when I was a teenager, some bought to go with special outfits and some just because! They were especially good when the children were small, you can't really wear much jewellery with a baby but a plastic bangle is ideal, they can pull on it, chew it, whatever and you and they are still safe at the end of it.

I needed a better way to store them more neatly so I could see what I had.

I googled for ideas and found a few pretty clever ideas:

Dimi at Style Scoop uses a bamboo cutlery tray

Jessica at Chronically Vintage has some beautiful vintage lingerie boxes 

Catherine at Stuff you can't have used kitchen roll tubes

Jan at a thousand words upcycled a mug tree

Can I just say, I thought I had a lot of bangles but compared to some people out there......

All these ideas are beautiful but I don't really have any space at the moment to have them out on show like that so:

These food tubs turned out to be ideal. They were £1.49 each from TK Max.

Divide and conquer, not pretty but effective.

They stack neatly in the cupboard too!

I can't believe I'm letting you see inside my messy cupboard!

I'd love to hear your ideas.

You might also be interested in:

Earrings Organised

Recycled Pen Tub Tutorial

Bracelet to Necklace Repurpose

Geometric Bangle Refashion

I'll be linking up at all these great link parties, pop over and have a look!

Geometric Bangle Refashion

I fell across this interesting bangle in the Charity shop for just 50p, it shouted out "buy me please" in such a lovely way that I felt it would be rude not to!

It had that brass metal inside that makes your arm green, but I like the little geometric shapes. (I am reliably informed that these are square based pyramids)

This bracelet has had two makeovers, You'll see why in a minute.

1st - Bright Nail Varnish

I'd seen ideas on good ol' pinterest where people have brightened up old jewellery with nail varnish so I took a selection of bright nail varnishes, some of these are my daughters (she's a good sharer!)

The bracelet has 14 little squares so I needed a number of colours devisable by 14. I think that's 2,7 and 14 isn't it? Anyhow, I found 6 bright colours and one left plain makes 7 - sorted!

 Each square got about 3 coats of nail varnish, some needed a fourth coat.

It looks pretty good doesn't it?

(what can go wrong) However after about 4 outings this happened:

Turns out this might be a teenagers project, you know people with plenty of time for messing about re coating their jewellery!

Time for another try.

2nd - Copper Enamel Paint

The nail varnish came right off with nail varnish remover, not that you would expect it not to of course. So the bangle was back to being naked again!

I had this copper enamel paint so tried painting every other square.

 This time I also painted the inside to stop the whole green arm thing.

It needed 3 coats of the copper enamel paint and there are a few brush marks if you look really closely. I imagine using masking tape and a spray paint would give fantastic results, but I do like using what I already have whenever possible. 
So far this paint is a lot more hard wearing than the nail varnish. I'll let you know how it gets on over time.

• Today I'm trying out a larger font size than I've used before - what do you think? Does it look like I'm shouting at you or is it just easier to read? Your feedback is very welcome!

You might also be interested in:

3 Pink Bracelets

UK Coin Picture

Evening Cardigan Makeover

Bracelet to Necklace repurpose

I'll be linking up at all these great link parties, why not check them out!

Simple Speech Bubble Cards

I needed a couple of quick, simple personalised cards the other day. I had just found some lovely geometric, really thick quality wrapping paper in one of my favourite shops in Leamington Spa, Berylune. They have a "tiny but packed with lovely things" shop, a blog and a website. 
There was lots of beautiful paper to choose from, loads of lovely neon colours with stars and shapes and I had to exercise extreme self control to limit myself to just these three. 

The paper is quite busy so I wanted the cards to be simple and modern - at least that is what I was aiming for.

If you want to make your own, you will need:

• Card blank and envelope (mine are just regular little A6 cards)
• Lovely paper (scrapbook paper or thick matt wrapping paper is ideal)
• Glue (I used Pritt Stick)
• Computer - although you could just draw your speech bubble by hand
• Laminator & laminating pouch - again not essential but this is what I used
• Sticky foam pads

First make the speech bubbles on the computer in word:

Open up word and make a new document, then click insert, picture, autoshapes then choose callout. There are a few different ones but I like these with the rounded corners.
You just click in the shape to start typing the words you want.
I played around with fonts and sizes (I only have the standard fonts the computer came with but I know you can downloads lovely ones from the internet)

I also made the outline of the speech bubble a bit thicker to make cutting out easier later. You do this by clicking on the speech bubble, selecting "format autoshape" then changing the line weight on the "Colors and lines" tab. (mine was 2pt but you could do even more)

I added a few non personalised bubbles to the page, so I could make more cards keep them in my stash - may as well fill the sheet of paper whilst I was doing this!
You can also play around with where the triangle-y bit is pointing just by moving the yellow dot at the point. You can make it shorter or longer but it flips itself from side to side if you move to too far across.
When I was happy with them all I printed it on decent quality paper (120 g/ms).

Next I laminated the paper. I love having a laminator, it was a present one birthday or Christmas from my Dad well over 10 years ago and at the time it seemed like a slightly strange present (sorry Dad!) Turns out it was a fantastic present, over the years we've used it for all sorts of things.
If you don't have one you could just print your bubbles on card, but I like the shiny plastic effect laminating them gives.

Cut the bubbles out, roughly first...

...then neatly and carefully. This is when the thicker black outline really does make it much easier.

Next cover the front of the card blank with patterned paper. I find this easiest to do if you cut the paper out a bit bigger than the card front, put a thin layer of glue all over the wrong side then lay the card front down onto it.

Then press it down firmly all over with a bone folder, (mine is the one from my header photo! If you don't have one, a clean wooden lolly stick works fine too) and trim the excess (with cheap Ikea scissors apparently!)

(the yellow butterfly and flower paper is some from my stash, which I thought might be nice for the cards for the little girls)

All you need to do now is attach the speech bubble to the card with foam pads to lift it off a bit.

The laminated speech bubbles are more shiny in real life than the photos show, which contrasts nicely with the matt of the paper.

You might also be interest in:

Birdcage Card Ideas

Circle card Crazy

Personalised Wedding Picture

Recycled Pen Tub Tutorial

I'll be linking up this project at all these lovely link parties, pop over for a look at loads of projects from other blogs