MAGIC Box DIY tutorial

In a Hanukkah holiday spirit, today I want to show you how to make a Magic Box or as it may known better-an Exploding box.

 However you want to call it,I love this collapsing box idea and made a pictorial for you to try it on

To make one of your own you'll need-

Two 12X12" double sided decorative cardstocks-I used Cratepaper "Bundled Up Candy Cane" #683231 stock for the box

 and

 American Crafts Peppermint Express Ornamint 366092 stock for the lid 

Lets begin-

Divide the cardstock into 3 equal sections  -score 2 straight lines from each point

 

 Turn the paper 90 degrees and do the same steps above to receive a total of  9 equal squares 

 Cut off the corners from each end

 And you have a ready base of your magic box.

Now lets make the lid for your box

 To make a lid we'll need to cut our stock to measure  8.4X8.4" 

Score 1"+1" on all sides 

Cut off 3 of the top little squares  on each side

Add 4 more small cuts as shown^^ 

And you're ready to  fold the lid

 The Magic Box is ready

Now we shall decorate :)

Since we need our exploding box to collapse ,we must add weight to the walls  .

To achieve this I upcycled 4 beer coasters that I decorated and then glued to the base we just made

Use your XYRON  5" or 9" Creative Station  to apply adhesive on one of coaster's sides

Do so with all 4 coasters  

Remove the protective  film and run the coasters one more time through your Creative Station, to apply glue on reverse of all the coasters 

 Peel of one of the sides and adhere 4X4" square of decorative cardstock on each of the four coasters 

First coaster  received the reverse side of the cut offs from our base ( Bundled Up "Candy Cane)

With second coaster I used Cratepaper Bundled Up "Snowmen"   double sided cardstock

I liked the whimsical skiing snowman  and decided to add it some dimension by using Teresa Collins's foam glue squares   .

Cut a snowman twin and then stick it above the existing on the background skiing dude

Raising the little fellow almost gives it a feel of real movement 

Peel off the protective paper from the back of the coaster and glue it onto the base 

Now continue to the next coaster 

Using my XYRON 3" Sticker maker  I apply glue on my vellum journaling die cut

Add  simple rectangulars to the areas I want to write on   

Placed 3 pieces of XYRON 6mm Double Sided tape  on top of the rectangulars 

And glued the shape in place

See how it's sheer in the areas around  the text blocks,but opaque in places where you actually might want to write something

For the third coaster I used  Peppermint Express "Dear Santa" 366095 cardstock

And decorated it with stickers from American Crafts "remarks"   accent & phrase 

The reverse side of  "Dear Santa"went to the 4th coaster 

I wanted to make a little money pocket to decorate this panel  with

Used a template to cut a festive pocket  using Doodlebug Design "Home for the Holidays" cardstock

Assembled it with my XYRON Mega Runner

and used my XYRON 3" Sticker Maker to glue it in place 

Added some present stickers from the same "remarks" sticker set I already used with my 3rd decorated square  and we are DONE :)

 Uh wait....I also added a cute little Santa to my second coaster square in the end ;)

It came from "remarks" set as well

 AND a family photo in the middle

The paper frame came from Heidy Swapp

 To hide the white border of the photo, I used Heidy Swapp's paper flowers 

Glued them on with the awesome XYRON 10 mm Glue dots

 And TA DA

Let the FUN begin!!!!

 closed

opened 

 P.S

After I finished the box,I decided the cut out snowmen were bothering to the eye ,so I decided to cover them with some stickers and felt much better afterwards :D

before 

after

'You Are Sweet' "doodle quotes"  bubble and Sprinkles came from Doodlebug Designs 

and the red tree from bug's ICONS cardstock stickers

 Lastly, I upgraded the lid with AC "remarks"  (used above) ornament  and Doodlebugs "fancy frills" trim

AND now I'm HAPPY!

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas to you all 

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New house...New Wall ART

As I had mention on my FB timeline ,we just recently moved to a new house ...
Of course,as usual, (you all know me,I can't live with white walls ) my hubby and I had totally renovated it even though it's a rental.
I just have the need to make it my own (and thank God to our new home owner that went with all my paint job ideas and allowed me a freehand )
We started with the living room's grand wall.
Originally, it had these weird squares drawn on it-totally not my design esthetics !!

 I don't even get what the heck is it...a color test swatches or something :D
LOVE the door though ;) No complains there!

We covered the whole wall with light grayish decorative plaster

Hubby working hard on the first layer...I did the decorative effects

 Bye ,Bye colour swatches

wet plaster

 half dried and lightly pressed 

 Pressed and lightly smoothed 

I have HUGE plans for this wall!!! I want to DIY a Pinspired project of piped shelving on it :)

Second room that got a VIP treatment was our bedroom .
Our home owner's kids used to sleep in this room ,but when we moved in,we decided to give the smaller room to our kids and take this huge room to ourselves (we deserve it ! )

Here is how it looked like before

It's a happy room no doubt ,but it just not me :p
Here is what we did with it -
First of, a nice solid layer of fresh vanilla paint on all the walls but one

And the wall that has left, received a decorative plaster in warm cream shade
This will be the wall where the  headboard of our bed will be

 It had turn nicely,but I decided to gold glaze it all

 And to age the other wall (not that happy about the aged wall though...will work on it some more :)

BUT the really grand paintwork and my complete and full attention got our kids's room
Since originally,it was the adult's bedroom,it had a dark wine shade wall in it,which actually was really nice,but not for a 6 and 2 year old girls....
I painted all the walls in happy and light shades of greenish and bluish -two walls been solid and two walls decoratively painted .
The biggest wall in the room got a crazy mixed and matched effect -lots of different shades were applied to this wall,one on top of the other,covering and mixing in each other

While the wall to it's right,got a very subtle pearl glaze

After I finished with the paint job, I decided to add a large scale wall art of my original illustration on the crazy wall
I enlarged my doodles in photoshop, selected some lovely cardstock by LVB and Teresa Collins,  cut  large stencils  of the drawings out of the selected cardstock with my silhouette cutter and used my Creatopia Machine loaded with repositionable adhesive cartridge to make some HUGE wall stickers

 Stencil and a Sticker of my flower out of LVB Poppy collection cardstock (still glued to the cutting matt of the cutter

 Applying sticky transfer sheet for easy transfer of the cut shape  to the Creatopia machine

 removing the cutting matt off 

 Applying the back to back repo glue

 The sticker is ready!

First option of using the cut shape is as stencil

 Stick it to the wall and tab some paint over it as you would normally do with any stencil

 Second option is to use the shape itself

 Side by side

 Adding more flowers with different pattern on -this cardstock is by Teresa Collins

 The yellow flower was cut out of Coordination Color Core Cardstock

 Adding leafs and more flowers

 Stenciling again

 Applying transparent pearl glaze

  More flowers :)

 This one is going to be a gold glazed flower

 I also added some hand drawn flowers in using my Posca markers

 And the bunny from our previous crib relocated with us too ( this is actually the beauty in repositionable adhesive by XYRON -you can take your art with you wherever you go,even if it was previously  glued to other walls!!! )
You can read the How To tutorial on the Bunny Sticker here in my past post

 Close Up of the done wall art

 View with the pearl wall

So what do you think?
Let me know how you like it all :)

 Photos of the fully decorated and furnished room soon to follow-stay tuned :)

 Cheers

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