The Cutting Cafe Inspiration - Handmade Embellishment Box

Welcome to some Cutting Cafe Inspiration!  Today we're showing off gift ideas for the holiday and I chose to work with the Handmade Embellishment Box Set!  It's the perfect way to give a gift that you made and that the recipient can use to make something too!  I decided to create some handmade flowers to give to a crafty friend!

The box itself is super easy to put together!  With cuts and scores in all of the right places, I didn't even need a video!  That's saying something...lol!  I'm in no way or ever could be an engineer... not in this life!  I had lots of time leftover to make these pretty flowers... they COULD be poinsettias or they could just be pretty red flowers!  I pulled up the Layered Flowers cutting file and pulled them in to my Design Space.  I created three different sizes about 1/4" apart in size and just duplicated to my heart's content!  I kept duplicating until I filled a page.  Then I cut one sheet of red and one sheet of white flowers!

While I was playing with flowers, I "accidentally" cut a bunch of these flowers from the Popup Flower Card, but what a happy accident that turned out to be!  I used them as a decoration on the box and I used popup tape to hold them on ... they can easily (but not too easily) be removed and also used as an embellishment!

I love the red and the white flowers!!  After I cut them out, I sprayed some Heidi Swapp Color Shine in gold on them.  When they were dry, I folded the petals just a bit where they are scored in the center of the petal for some dimension.  Then I used liquid glass to layer them on top of one another and a gold pearl for the center!  I cut a piece of acetate to fit inside the box that I used to attach my flowers to with a glue dot so they could be removed for use easily!  You could add an acetate window to the box top if you'd like... I left mine open at least for now (much easier to take pics of!) but it would make a nice touch!

I also used some Christmas Mini Words that I'd printed a while ago and still had a few waiting to be added to a project.. perhaps one with pretty Christmas flowers.  I just cut them out with a die and distressed them a bit.

That's it for me today!  Be sure to hop on over to the Cutting Cafe Blog!  Comment there for a chance to win three files of your choice!  And then check out what everyone has created for you today!  You never know!  Maybe it's that perfect gift you've been looking for!

The Cutting Cafe Lip Balm Holder Inspiration

Welcome to some Cutting Cafe Inspiration!  Today we're working with the Lip Balm-Chapstick Holder Set!  I knew the chapstick gift I'd be giving would be this awesome Prickly Pear Lip Balm so I wanted to give it a desert feel... and the Mama Llama papers from Simple Stories were once again perfect for it!

I'm sure if you've been here before you'll remember that constructing things is not my forte'!...lol... I always say... I'm not an Engineer!  So these types of cards used to scare me... I hated the measuring and scoring that you had to do and hope it all came together the right way.  Using the SVG files from the Cutting Cafe takes all of the guesswork out of it!  I just pull the files into my Design Space, re-size according to the instructions that come with the files (which come in other formats as well), and then I decide what color papers I want to cut everything from!  Cuts are where they are supposed to be, as well as dashed scoring, and I just have to fold and glue!

The clear lip balm holder part especially!  I did watch the video that Regina has on the website to see where I needed to glue and where I didn't for my first one, but after that, it's easy peasy!    I mistakenly made my glue a little messy on the ends of the box so I decided to tie some ribbon around it and it turned out to be a happy accident!

And it's so cool how on the inside of the card, it's so easy to get the little lip balm out without tearing apart the whole card!  I think it would be cool when the lip balm is removed to then fill this clear box with some fun colorful sequins or balls or anything pretty so that it can still be displayed and then it's kind of like a shaker...

To decorate in my southwest desert theme, I cut the llama out of the Simple Stories paper and then used some dies in my stash to create this little scene.

There are PDF and JPG files included for the cute sentiments I used on the banner on the front of the card and for my little signature area on the inside as well as the lips and a few other sentiments.  I cropped the ones from the JPG file and then placed the ones I wanted to use in a word document and set them up so I could cut them out the way that I wanted.  I left room for die cutting the banner and knew I'd want to cut this layer for signing a little bigger so left a lot of room around it as well.

I'm entering this into the Outlawz Twisted Thursday Challenge with a Twist of Something to Wear!  You definitely wear lip balm...lol!

Thanks for stopping!  Hope I've inspired you to try out one of these types of files that Regina has in the shop!  And don't forget to get on over to the Cutting Cafe Blog, comment there for a chance to win some free files and then check out what everyone else has created!