Love Notes Box ** Made The Chirp**

            
        I could call it a Smile Box
This is an altered craft, just right for valentine’s cards.  I currently use it to store completed cards that I have made but think I will change to hold my special love notes.  I really like this box; it reflects my personality and makes me smile when I look at it.



The Recipe
1.      Get a box - Any box will do: this one was a “suit case” type box meant to hold a set of children’s books.  I got this box for free when I was at Boarders close-out sales, it was empty, but I new it would make a great altered project!   A baby shoe box would work great to I think.

 2.      Choose a pallet of four coordinating colors – I used Red, Yellow, Black and Cream/off white

3.      Find a base paper you like. I couldn't find in my stash what I wanted so I made my own using my Imagine: I first used a small diamond shape, colored it black, then flood-filled my mat with little black diamonds.  Print only and – wola!  Diamond Checkered Paper.

4.      I used a plaid sheet from Provo Craft’s Christmas Cheer Cricut 6X12 stack for my red center papers.

5.      Next I used Happy Hunting's  for the following words/phrases: Love Notes, Smile, Notes, Romance, Little Things,  and This & That, as well as some swirls/flourish

6.       Gather coordinating bling - trinkets, ribbons, and flowers, brads, Cricut cuts,  - things you like

7.       Arrange – this is the fun part - decide where you want everything (play around a bit).  Then, once you are satisfied (that is the part that always takes me a while) glue it all in place. 

8.       The last stage is decoupage.  I got a little nervous here; everything got all wrinkly and bumpy – but no fear – there are no mistakes in creativity.  And it all dried nice and flat. 

                     Note on the flowers:  

The back (yellow) flower is paper.  I put cloth flowers on top of that and put them together with a brad.  I glued and decoupaged over the entire back/bottom yellow layer, lifting up the other layers, to make sure it would have a good strong bound and still be 3D – worked great! 

Supplies

Box
Papers:  Checkered paper (homemade base), Red circuit paper(center mat) , cream (contrasting word base) , black (words)  & yellow(flower) papers
Imagine & or Cricut (words, flourish and base paper)
Decoupage & glue
Bright flowers: I used cloth of cream with red and black splatters
Black brads (for flower centers)
Bling – various key charms, gems, stamps, old playing cards, stickers, Cricut cuts
Ribbon:  Black lace ribbon (around the top) and black word ribbon
Happy Hunting’s cartridge (words & flourishes)
Paper clips (to hold note (inside lid))
Black or brown ink (around edges of box and some papers)