My Secret Project

Over the past two or three weeks I have been squirreling myself away in the scrapbook room, hoping to create a birthday gift for Jan. Today is the day, happy birthday honey, I hope you love my gift as much as I have loved making it. This is for you.

I got the idea from the "52 Reasons I Love You" website at www.52reasonsiloveyou.com. This was created by Lowri McNabb - thanks Lowri for the inspiration. I kept the inside of the cards simple, just the text and a pale blue border. I embellished the front with a punched flower using my foil technique discovered many years ago when I did ceramics. A couple of leaves, some bling, book rings and ribbons and it was done. I wanted Jan to have a box to keep her cards in so I made a box out of an empty tissue box, glued the same punched flowers, along with a heart and chipboard numbers to the front to create the design before using the same foil technique to cover the box. I then cut out an inner sleeve from some corrugated card, covered the inside in the same paper as the front and back covers of the card pack and inserted it into the box. All that was left was to punch the holes around the open edge, weave a ribbon through the holes to disguise the join and then add more ribbon; and of course add my signature butterfly (complete with bling). The cards slot neatly into the box and all the ribbons perfectly disguise the gift inside. Am loving it!