Altered Greeting Card Box

This was my second submission for the Heartfelt Creations design team – when I visited the current design team’s blog hop yesterday, I found Angelica Turner’s project using the same stamp – She does a beautiful work!

Inspiration

Altered projects are especially difficult for me – I do so many cards, that my first impulse is always to make a card. But when I came across a beat-up accordion file at the local office supply store, I knew I could make something of it.

Since I do make cards every week, I’ve always needed a smart way to organize them. So, I turned this into a file for cards – a slot for each month, and a few extra slots for general cards – baby, wedding, etc.

In deciding on the image for the front, I picked the floral image that first drew me to Heartfelt Creations – I saw it at a stamp show and had to add it to my collection of floral stamps!

It was quite a project! It took me one evening, plus another whole day – but I really like the outcome.

Hope you do too!

 

 

Ingredients

Paper

Green/Small Dots (My Mind’s Eye)	Wild Asparagus/Pink/Tan Strips (My Mind’s Eye)
Soft Serenity patterned paper (Provo Craft)	Basic Black (SU!)
Always Artichoke (SU!)	River Rock (SU!)
Blush Blossom (SU!)	Whitewash Wicker Chair (Core’dinations)
Stamper’s Select White (Paper Trey Ink)

Inks

Memento Tuxedo Black (Tsukineko)

Really Rust (SU!)

Stamps

Autumn Corsage (Heartfelt Creations)

Accessories

COPIC markers (Imagination International)	SPICA glitter pens (Imagination International)
Grand Label 4 dies	Sponge
Grand Calibur die cut machine (Spellbinders)	Sandpaper
Gold embossing powder (Stampendous)	Anita’s Glossy Black craft paint
Adirondack Alcohol ink (Ranger)	Crystal Effects lacquer (SU!)
Ribbon (Hobby Lobby)	Foam tape
Medium oval punch (SU!)	Corner rounder punch (SU!)
Small oval punch (SU!)	Clear address labels (Avery)
Key Tag punch (SU!)	Scissors
Paint brushes, foam brush	Rotary trimmer with straight blade (Fiskars)
Adhesive Transfer Gun 714 (Scotch)

 

Instructions

Here’s the before pictures – pretty ugly! It had actually yellowed with age, and was all scratched and dented. 

The inside was in very good shape – nice and clean, but very very plain.

Step 1: I tore it apart! Well, I carefully tore out the accordion file. 

 

 

Step 2: I sanded the outside of the cover. This took several hours – much tougher than I expected. I found as I sanded that the yellowing had occurred because there was a plastic film over the whole thing. It came off as I sanded. 

 

Step 3: Instead of trying to cover the folds with paper, I painted them with the black paint.

I used alcohol inks to color the hardware – I used the Mushroom and Cranberry colors, and
applied the mix with a felt square.

I used a small paintbrush to paint black around the edges of the hardware, so the original blue paper wouldn’t show through.

 

Step 4: Next, I covered the sections with paper. I used the small dots paper on all the panels, except the bottom, on which I used solid dark green. I used the oval punch to get the opening around the clasp. The handle was tougher – I ended up punching ovals in black paper rectangles to cover the seams in the patterned paper.

Inside, I used the solid light green paper.

Note – when you cut the paper to cover the panels, leave plenty of extra for the edges. This box was 10 inches wide, so the 12” x 12” patterned paper had the perfect extra for folding to the inside.

Step 5: For the tabs, I didn’t want to leave them plain white. So I measure the tabs, and cut out 2 patterns of paper to create alternating tabs. I used the corner rounder punch to match the rounded tab corners of the accordion file.

I mounted the paper to the front of each tab.

Step 6: I built the flowers into layers, so I stamped it 3 times on the white cardstock. I colored the images with COPICs, using these colors: Y11, Y13, R30, R32, R35, R81, R89, YG93, and YG97. I added glitter to the image with SPICAs, using Mint, Peach, and Buttermilk.

Then I cut out the images in pieces, trimming each one very closely. I painted the red berries with the clear lacquer paint to make them shine.

 

Step 7: I cut and embossed a dark green Grand Label 4, and sponged the edges with rust ink. Then I cut the next smallest die out of the Core’dinations cardstock, and sanded the edges. The images are mounted with foam tape, and each piece stacked on its’ base image.

Step 8: I remounted the accordion file in the cover. 

Step 9: I printed the labels in green, using clear return address labels. Then I put the label on the blush cardstock, and punch them out with a small oval punch. The green mat is punched out with the key tag punch. I mounted each label on a green mat label, then adhered the final label to a tab.

Step 10: The finishing touch was tying some ribbons around the handle – I found some brown ribbon with small dots in green and pink, and matching strips on the reverse side.

Here’s another look at the final result - Thanks for sticking with me through all the steps!