Pencil Case Box

In my quest to practice and broaden by bookbinding skills, I finally made it to box making. Many of the basic skills for bookbinding are required for theses boxes as well.

Here is the final product which is still missing an elastic on the open side which will help keep the lid closed. 

To start out you need to select a piece of decorative paper and matching book cloth.

The first step is to make the box using book board. I cut my base to measure 3 x 7 1/2 inches (or 7.5 x 19cm) and my side pieces to measure 7 1/2 x 1 1/4 inches (19x3cm) and 2 7/8 x 1 1/4 inches (19.6 x 3 cm). The second set of side pieces needs to be a bit (two board widths to be precise) shorter as it will be glued in between the larger ones.

After the box is glued together, it will be covered with a piece of book cloth. The piece needs to be the size of you box bottom plus the height, the width, the height of the side piece plus 1/2 inch. Used a paper strip to measure the proper size of the side piece. Once your piece is cut, glue down the bottom of the box in the centre of your book cloth piece. Next cut the cloth at the corners by keeping the pieces at the short sides straight whereas you remove a triangular section from the section on the longer sides. Glue the long sides first (outside, inside and then bottom) you will need to carefully snip the fabric at the corners to be able to fold it over. When done, fold over the pieces on the short side.

Completed box

The last step is to cover the bottom with a piece of decorative paper. To adjust the uneven bottom you might want to consider to do some infill by adding a strip of paper that is the size of the exposed book board. When it is dry, glue a piece of your decorative paper over the bottom. It will be about 3/16 of an inch narrower than your bottom piece (you need to adjust for the board widths and the thickness of your cloth).

Now that the box is complete, it is time for the cover piece. It requires three pieces of book board in total, a bottom, a top and a spine. I cut my bottom and top pieces a 1/4 inch longer and wider. The height of the spine corresponds with the length of the other two pieces but the width should be measured against the height of the box. Place the pieces on a piece of your book cloth that gives you 1/2 inch turn-ins. Leave a gap of about 3/16 of an inch (two board width) or 5mm between the boards to give the box a hinge.The cloth should only cover about 3/4 of an inch of the top piece. The remainder will be covered by another piece of the decorative paper, again with 1/2 inch turn-ins. This piece should minimally overlap the book cloth.

Covered outside

 

Inside all covered

On the inside, a piece of book cloth is needed to cover the inside of the top, the spine and a small part of the bottom piece. It should be cut marginally smaller than the height of the cover to expose a small section of the decorative paper.

Lastly, you need to glue the box to the uncovered bottom piece. It is important to place the box properly into the cover piece before letting it dry.

Materials List:

Book cloth

Matching decorative paper

Elastic

Two small grommets 

Glue (I used a mix of PVA and paste but straight PVA to glue down the box)

General tools to measure and cut

One Sheet Wonder Cards

Recently I came across the so-called One Sheet Wonder technique. It is not new but it was to me.
If you are not familiar with the concept, here is a quick description.

The main idea is to use up a complete sheet of paper, so no little remnants which often get collected but never used. (Sounds familiar? If not, great, if yeah, welcome to my life.) Once you have your paper selected, pick a few uni coloured sheets that match the pattern as well as different colour stamp pads. Look for some stamps that you think convey a message you will need in the near future (birthday, mother's day, Christmas, Easter etc). If you like you can also select some dies that could embellish the paper but if you are like me, those ideas might also come as you go along. Finally, pick some bling to add if that is your style. Besides some basic tools (glue, scissors etc) you will also need same blank cards and maybe some white cardstock in general.

So, here I am going to show you the ten cards I created from one sheet of 12x12 DSP.

I will start by showing you all the materials I intended to use at the beginning. (I will post a list of the basics at the bottom.) Then I will show you the pattern I created to cut my sheet into smaller pieces, before moving on the the cards themselves.

Somewhere hidden in the middle you can see the sheet of paper that I selected. It came from the 2018/19 Tea Room suite and was the only sheet from that series I had, so I decided it was time for it to be used up.

Here you can see the sheet after I cut it into sections according the a template I created before hand. In order to do this, you need to keep in mind the size of your cards. I used half sheets of 8.5x11, so my cards were all 5 1/2 x 4 1/4. (If you are wondering about the right bottom corner, I had used a small section of the sheet during a workshop where I was given the sheet for a project.)

This is the cutting template which I created on my computer after the fact.

These cards are made from the first row of pieces.
A couple of them, especially the first two, were inspired by Daniela Hödl who recently created a  YouTube video (in German). Her website is called Die Wunderwelt aus Papier (.com) if you would like to check it out.

   
If you wonder about the second last strip (1 1/2 inches), it became part       of the next row as I used two piece in the first card. I simply turned the
first piece of row two over to use its backside.
      
 

 

 These are the cards from row two.
 
  

And finally the cards from row three.


Materials used:


1 sheet of DSP (here Tea Time from StampinUp)
4 sheets of coordinating colour cardstock (yellow, orange, blue and purple)
5 sheets of white cardstock for the cards
a white remnant for cards 1+2
StampinUp ink pads:
Rich Razzleberry and Sky So Soft from the old collection
So Saffron and Grapefruit Grove from the new collection
Clear glue, double sided tape and glue dots
Ribbon and crystals
A variety of stamps for the respective greetings
I also used a variety of dies but mostly the Flourish Thinlits and the Detailed Bands


I hope you like this post. If you have any questions, I am just an email away. :-)

I am back

It's been a while but I hope to make more use again of my blog from now on. Most of my work from the previous 10 months or so ended up on my Instagram account. Feel free to take a look there.
I am not sure yet whether or not I will repost items which you can see on Instagram.