TARDIS Chocolate/Trinket Box

A gift for a Whovian friend, made from 80% recycled paper materials (cardboard, cereal cartons, catalogue papers, etc.), inspired by another photo making its way around the internet, of an adorable TARDIS chocolate box by Michelle Quinn here.

The walls are made from four pieces of rectangular cardboard, held together by sturdy cardstock wrapped around them and painted dark blue. The boxes (including the three stacked squares making up the roof) are stiff cardstock folded into origami boxes and glued together where appropriate. The little light at the top was made using a stiff plastic sheet, cut to shape, scored and folded before adding the roof and gluing it all in place. I added the little details as well, like the ‘POLICE BOX’ labels and the notice outside the door (all handwritten), and the tiny door handle made using thin, twisted wires. The whole thing was then given a few coats of varnish to seal in the paint and give it a smooth appearance. 

Birthday Hearts

For mum. Letter stickers, felt flower and ribbon were bargains from Popular’s BookFest - and I broke them out for this project. :) They were nice, and saved me a whole lot of time cutting out letters from paper. 

The heart squares in the background were formerly a huge sheet of valentine’s wrapping paper that I cut out, square by square, and now stash and assemble when I need them for projects like these. 

The lace border at the bottom was cut the way I did it in the previous pink doily card (it’s going to be a staple favourite now) :D

Mum loved it. ♥

Fabulous birthday

A belated birthday card for an acquaintance… Before I knew it, it had turned out really pink and girly. 

The lacy borders were strips of pale pink cardstock cut using Victorian pattern scissors by Unicorn, then the little holes were punched using the sharp end of my compass to create more patterns (improvisation!). It turned out beautifully, and I will definitely be using this method again.

The doily was cut from pink tissue paper using the paper snowflake cut-out method - except I rounded the corners instead of cutting points as you usually would when cutting a snowflake. I may make a video tutorial of it sometime. It’s one of the prettiest snowflake/doilies I’ve ever cut and I’m pretty proud of it~ It was a real hassle to put on the card though - first I used glue stick, then white craft glue to get the stubbornly not-sticking parts. It would be lovely to have spray adhesive, I think, but that's one of the pricier things I've never gotten around to buying.

The girl holding the heart was copied from an old tracing of a stamp I saw in a craft book years ago (this would work with any interesting images too - just copy with tracing paper, and transfer!). The little details were drawn using Artline Drawing System 0.1 pens, coloured in using a white Signo Choose pen, as well as various Gelly Roll pens - then cut out and put on using dimensional adhesive. 

The journaling box was hand drawn and cut from kraft paper, outlined in black and white, and the sentiment hand-written. It is also on dimensional adhesive.

Finally, flowers and butterflies punch-outs were used to accent the card (fill up space, more like).

Purple Peacock

Purple Peacock

A peacock-themed birthday card for a lovely friend. The front was inspired by Googling 'peacock cards', and I created this by hand-cutting teardrop shapes out of thin purple paper as well as using a hole punch on shimmery purple paper. I built the tail by first lightly sketching out the curves of each tail feather, and then adhering white cross-stitch thread following the sketch lines using glue. Once that dried, I added sparkle to the thread by going over it with a silver pen. The purple pieces were then adhered to the card using dimensional adhesive.

The additional feathery details were added using Gelly Roll Aqualip pens, and coloured with more glitter pens. 

This was massively time-consuming simply because I am a perfectionist (well, there was also all that cutting to be done). And because I liked it very much.

However, I don’t think I will be working with white card again anytime soon. It’s too easily dirtied, especially since I’m prone to getting ink stains on my fingers. 

Starburst Series

This little series was inspired by Kristina Werner @ kwernerdesign.com - you can see the original card here.

A personalised good luck card for a friend who’s going to study abroad. The radial pattern idea was recreated by cutting out triangles of paper and pasting it on the card. 

The name ‘Eric’ is also hand-cut (letter stickers are so very expensive) - I typed out the name using the Varsity font in Word, and changed the font size before tracing the letters and transferring onto coloured paper, outlining and cutting out. You can also print it out for convenience, but I was rushing this and didn’t have a printer at hand.

And a star sticker was added, from a bunch of stickers I’ve had for a long time. :)

Should’ve done the radial pattern in shimmery paper though, that would have been much nicer. As it is, the glitter on this card was added by colouring my finger tip with a very watery silver pen (Uniball Signo, a priceless set I got from Japan years ago) and rubbing it over the paper. It creates a very subtle, shimmery effect, and is watery enough (like paint, without the wet-warping effect on paper) to spread out fairly evenly. 

Since I had paper left from the radial pattern cut-out from the card above, I decided to use it for another good luck card, again for another friend going overseas (EVERYONE’S LEAVING. :( )

Anyway, I changed the orientation of the card to landscape, to make it different, and pasted the pattern on. The cardstock is a glittery light blue. The ribbon banner is made from strips of paper cut from pages of an old Kinokuniya (one of the awesomest bookstores ever) Christmas catalogue (coincidentally, there was a part of an Archie Comics cover in my set of cut-outs, and this friend LOVES Archie Comics. Unfortunately it was covered up by the other elements). Tracing paper, cut to shape, was pasted over it to soften the colours. 

Like in the previous card, the letters for the name ‘Jo’ were hand-drawn with reference to the Varsity font, with some variations. They were then outlined in black Aqualip and white Signo pens (this is another new love of mine) to imitate the look of the font. I also traced ‘good luck’ from my computer screen using the font The Quickest Shift, then cut it out and pasted it onto kraft paper and cut a banner out of that too, before putting it all together on dimensional adhesive.

It’s a real pity the glittery parts don’t show up in photos, because they look amazing. :)

Pusheen says 'Thank You'

Pusheen says Thank You

Because Pusheen is too cute not to use more than once! 

Pusheen character cut out of grey card, outlined in black Aqualip pen. Ball of ‘yarn’ created by cutting a circle from hard cardboard, sticky-taping the back and wrapping cross-stitch thread around it. 

It was a really enjoyable little card to make! :)

*Pusheen cat character does not belong to me.