GCD gift set details

in today's main post, for my day of the GCD studios blog hop, i showed you the four piece birthday gift set i made for lovely husband jeff's mother's upcoming "significant birthday". the set includes a gift bag, a birthday card, a small photo album (to fill with pics from the party we're having later this month) and a box in which to save all the cards and mementoes from the big day. in the interests of keeping the blog hop post short, i just showed a photo and listed my materials, but just in case anyone needs more detail, here you go!

the box: is unfinished balsa wood from michaels, and cost about $5. it's approximately 9.5 x 12". (with a slightly larger lid, so you can paint and decoupage without worrying about fit!) since i really dislike going around corners and over edges and making everything line up perfectly on multiple planes of vision, i did what i usually do in these situations: i cheated! i base coated the entire inside and all around the edges of the outside in black acyrilic paint, and then had lovely husband jeff take it outside for a coat of spray-on glossy sealant. this way, i could work only on the flat panels of each side of the box, and the narrow border of black is an intentional design statement! (if you're new to 3-D papercrafting, TRUST ME, this is the way to go!)

i made the decorative panel for the top of the box first. i used broderbund's printshop software to make a template for the oval in the exact size and shape i wanted, and a cute dingbat font (db love pastries) for the cupcake. (later i re-sized the whole thing as one object to have smaller but identical motifs for the photobook & card, without having to re-create the work.) i printed out a few copies, which i then stapled to 3 or 4 layers of patterned paper and cut out multiples of the various bits. my intention was just to paper-piece them the normal way, with maybe a black outline, but these gorgeous vibrant prints were just a little too strong when layered directly on top of each other, so i wound up mounting each piece on black cardstock and cutting again to leave about a 1/16th of an inch border. i put little squares of foam tape on the lower edges of each cupcake layer and the heart at the top, so they would have a bit of dimension.

the scallops around the oval are the cute motifs from the brown "sweet tarts" patterned paper, on which i used a 1" circle punch. i then used a 1 3/8" circle punch on the black cardstock, cut all the circles in half, layered them, and attached them to the edge of the oval with (gasp!) regular old scotch tape. the strips which make up the frame were cut with a paper trimmer from the reverse side of the "candy charms" paper, mounted on black and then cut with scallopy decorative scissors.

for nearly a day i thought the box was FINISHED with just the cupcake and the frame on the rectangular background of "taffy" paper, but eventually i decided it needed one more thing...so i made the little corner elements by stacking leftover hearts & sweet tart circles in various ways until i found a combo i liked. again i used foam tape to pop them up.

after the top was done, it was just a question of choosing something for the edges, and to line the inside of the box and lid and WOOHOO it looked pretty fab, if i do say so myself!

the card: measures 6 x 8.25" and is built on a black cardstock base. the materials and basic process were much the same as for the box, but i've scaled the cupcake down slightly to fit the smaller proportions, and i changed around the papers i used for the various elements. the scallops were made of black cardstock using a 3/4" circle punch. again i used stripes from the reverse side of the "candy charms" paper, but i trimmed them slightly differently and mounted them across the corners instead of in a frame pattern. i made a coordinating panel for the inside using light blue patterned paper from the sunny days collection and printed my text in "tabitha" font, formatted in broderbund's printshop.

the photo book: is from the SEI preservation series, with teal covers made from supersturdy plastic-coated cardstock. since the teal chimed in quite well with some of the stripes from the reverse side of the "candy charms" paper, and the spine was already conveniently colored black, i only needed to affix a panel to the front of the album which matched the other items in the set. again i scaled down the cupcake and the oval, and switched up the placement of the various patterns. this time the scallop frame was cut with my trusty decorative scissors... (one of my very first papercrafting purchases from michael's; at least 15 years ago!) ...and the frame uses slightly thinner stripes on the top and bottom than on the sides.

the bag: is a plain black one from hallmark which measures 10.5 x 13 x 6.5". it was made after the rest of the set was finished, when i realized that i had to have some way to *wrap* everything else! i used a leftover oval and cupcake, punched more black circles for the scallopped border, made another set of corner strips, and swapped out the plain black ribbon for some brown-n-pink stripes on the handle...and we're good to go!

now i cannot wait for the party so we can give

the birthday girl her presents!

(complete materials: all patterned papers: GCD designs from the eye candy collection, with a bit of red textured paper from the sunny days collection; template for cupcakes & hearts: "db love pastries" font from scrap-n-fonts; black cardstock: core'dinations; ink: colorbox; acrylic paint & glossy sealer spray: folk art; 12 x 9" wooden memory box: michael's; 4 x 6" photo album: sei; adhesives: xyron cartridge, tombow power hold adhesive runner, 3m foam tape & double stick tape; other: decorative scissors, several sizes of ek success circle punches; tabitha font (used inside card & photo book)