RobinsCraftRoom.com

A Tote Box with Gift Cards

Aloha, all!

What makes this gift box with note cards special is that it’s made with TWO boxes made from the Sizzix Box #2 Die to create a little tote.  How cool is that?  I learned this technique at one of the Late Night Stampers Pre-Convention Stamp Camps in Salt Lake City earlier this month.  What a great idea for using this die!

Something else that makes it special is that I used Stampin’ Up!’s new Wood Sheets for the boxes.  I bought a couple of packs of the wood sheets to try them with various Sizzix Dies just so I could answer your questions before you decide to order some.  I’ll make some of my comments/findings at the end of this post.

For this tote, I cut two of the Box #2 shapes, and made all the folds EXCEPT the two for the top flap.  I left those intact so they’d stand up nice and straight.  After I put the two boxes together, I lined the inside of the tallest part with Designer Series Paper.  (All the DSP in this project are from the Razzleberry Lemonade set of papers–gorgeous set!)  Then I punched the top of one box with the Word Window Punch.  At the Stamp Camp, we then put the boxes together and punched the word window punch through the second box.  Can’t do that with the Wood Sheets because the two Wood Sheets glued together don’t fit into the punch.  I found that out the hard way, so had to use a Craft Knife to cut the handle out of the second box.  Won’t make that mistake again!

All the cards are 3" square gift cards.  Four of them fit nicely into one side of the tote, and I put the envelopes in the other side of the tote.

Now for my comments about the wood sheets:

The good:

• They cover a whole Bigz XL Die, so there’s little chance you’ll cut one wrong.
• Our punches cut them nicely.
• They really do have a pretty wood grain.

The less good:

• They are textured wood on only one side.  So, for a project where both sides will show–as in the above project–the other side is a white plastic-type paper.  You may or may not be happy with that effect on your finished project.
• They fold nicely on the straight of the grain, but do not fold so nicely against the grain.  I had to cut or file rough edges of wood grain off in several places even where the scores were very good.
• They are thick, and will not work well where you have lots of folds.  For example, I could not use wood sheets for both the cover and inside of a Matchbox made from the Sizzix die.
• While you can stamp on them, the ink from my classic stampin’ pads did bleed a little into the wood grain. 
• I understand from others that they do not do well with heat embossing.  They’re too heavy and the wood grain is too fragile for dry embossing.

My bottom line:  I made a nice, wood-grain looking card using Creamy Caramel Card Stock and the Woodgrain Background Stamp stamped in Chocolate Ship.  Until I find another "a-ha" use for the wood sheets, I’ll just stick with what I’ve made from my test packages.

Subscribe to the comments for this post