Mystery Box 2 Challenge: Guest Toiletry Basket

As you've seen from previous posts, at the beginning of the year, I sent a box full of these mystery items to each of my daughters. I made one for myself as well.

It contained this note:

This challenge was difficult and I obviously missed my own deadline by a long shot! I had several ideas on how to use my items ... including turning the basket into a wig for my weekly photo challenge! But I finally decided to break my rule about "no more than $5.00" in order to get the project done. (Sorry girls!)

I started by using the glitter paper to line the bottom of the basket. Then I cut the string of party beads and hot glued them to the edge of the basket. It took a bit more than one strand. After that, I laid down a line of the glitter glue just under the inside edge of the basket as an accent.

I used the gold ribbon to tie a hand towel and washcloth together.

I used the glitter pipe cleaner to tie the toothbrush and toothpaste together.

I used half the white bias tape to tie the razor and shaving cream together.

Finally, I arranged all the toiletries in the basket, along with a bar of soap, some mouthwash, some shampoo, and some lotion.

I actually made two toiletry baskets - one for the guest room upstairs and another for the massage/meditation room downstairs. I had a spare basket from a gift Julie gave me for Christmas. I had enough glitter paper and beads and glitter glue for the basket edge. I added more gold ribbon from my stash. The only items I didn't use were a few beads, the purple paint, and the tissue paper. Don't be surprised if they show up in an upcoming challenge.
.
.

Greeting Cards

Every now and then I get an itch to make some greeting cards. It gives me a chance to play with paper, doodads, and color. I was inspired to make these from a couple cards I saw online. 

The first gave me an excuse to buy a new heart-shaped hole punch. This one is 2-3/8" ... a nice size for many many projects in the future.

I used the punch to make the girl's skirt. I used an old button from my grandmother's button jar for the head and heart-shaped buttons for the balloons.

Inside, a message for my girl who like her fancy shoes!

---

The second card was inspired by a YouTube video. In the video, Marianne makes a series of cards including this clever apology card made with a real eraser. I used glue dots to adhere the eraser to the card. I got to try out a new set of alphabet stamps for the lettering.

I kept the inside message simple.

I highly recommend watching the entire video for more great ideas:

.
.

---

Birthday card inspired by buttonbaps:

Apology card inspired by Marianne:

High In The Sky

I got this done by the deadline at the end of March. I really did. I'm just really, REALLY bad about making the blog posts. (There are at least two others I did last year that I never got around to posting, either.)

 It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with my basket and supplies. I had an idea forming slowly over a couple months, but nothing concrete. It wasn't until after Easter, when mom gave Jodie a hot-air balloon gift, that I came up with this idea.







































I got the pretty blue and silver ribbons from the table decroations at my cousin's wedding (with permission, of course). The silver ones were just the perfect size to weave into the basket.

And inside? 































The origami flowers I made for our July 2014 AuralArtists' Challenge.


Out of the 9 items in the mystery box, I used 6 of them for my project.
- Wicker basket
- Glitter paper
- Tissue paper
- Party beads
- Gold ribbon
- Pipe cleaner

I had to buy some extra pipe cleaners and the balloons. The rest of it came from my craft stash.

Now all I need is some fishing line to hang it from the ceiling!

Mystery Box Challenge: Pidgey's Perch

I was so excited when, around Valentine's Day, I got a surprise in the mail! It was a box of craft supplies with a charge to use the included basket and five other items to create something cool. We could also use any items from our stash and up to $5 in additional purchased supplies. Challenge accepted.

I picked out my favorite pieces from the box. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do or how I was going to use them, but fortunately my wonderful friend & roomie Brianna was there to inspire and co-craft. We brainstormed a bit, then decided to try a challenging project: let's make a bird house!

We started by cutting the basket down to bird house size. This meant carefully cutting and un-weaving one of the short sides to move it closer to the other short size, changing the orientation of the rectangle essentially from the "portrait" seen above to a smaller "landscape."

The basket wasn't weaving back together very easily, so I broke out the hot glue gun. Worked like a charm.

After trimming off the excess, we had a tiny basket maybe 1/3 the size of the original. It was so cute! But it had a destiny to fulfill as a bird house, not as a tiny basket.

We didn't want to waste any part of the original basket, so we sectioned it off to be used in other parts of the bird house. The sections that were once the sides were joined together to make the roof, and the section that was once the bottom became the front.

We attached the front using hot glue (my one true love). To make a perfect opening for a bird, we searched for a perfectly proportioned round object to trace and found it in the basket tag. So I guess you say we really did use the entire basket!

Again I united with my darling hot glue gun to attach the roof.

We used the same tag to trace a circle out of the red glitter felt to complete the front and add a flash of color.

At this point we looked at the bird house and thought that it looked familiar... sort of like a Poke Ball, which houses Pokemon -- only in bird house form.

We thought it would be a pretty cool home for a Pidgey, which is a birdlike Pokemon; hence the name Pidgey's Perch. We decided to use the bias tape as an accent to the hole to make the theme more consistent.

The house was still looking too void of color, so we painted the underside of the roof bright red, added more sparkle felt to peek through the roof hole, and outlined the edges in red glitter glue.

We tore up the red tissue paper to act as bedding inside the bird house.

Then we attached a string of party beads to the roof to act as a rope from which the bird house can hang from the patio.

We think it looks pretty handsome hanging from our patio! Maybe it will attract some visitors.

We're looking forward to seeing how Mom, Jeanne, and Julie used their Mystery Box supplies!

Mystery Box Challenge 1

For 2015, the AuralArtists are going to try a new kind of challenge. Instead of using a common medium, like we did each month last year, I am putting together Mystery Boxes. Every two or three months, I'll put together a box full of craft "ingredients" and send them to each of my daughters. The boxes will contain similar-but-not-identical items. Each of us will create a project with the supplies, adding in anything else from our craft stashes and a minimum amount of money for additional supplies.

The first Mystery Box was a test that I put together at Christmastime. I made one for myself, one for Jodie, and one for my good friend Virginia who lives across the country. The idea was to use at least six of the items in the box, anything from our stashes, and no more than $5 of extra supplies. We each had different/coordinated colors of items. Mine were mostly pink and white.  Here's what we started out with:

In addition to these supplied items, I used the following items from my stash for my project. After I got started, I also switched out the white felt supplied in the box. I substituted a piece of black glitter felt for the background because it made the heart "pop" more than the white.

I decided to turn my flat picture frame into a shadow box frame. I added the depth with the bottom of the cardboard box. I began by gluing the black glitter felt to the inside of the box.

Then I mended the broken ornament by gluing the ribbons, flowers, bows and bells back in place. I left the hook attached to the hanging cord.

I primed the wood frame with Gesso. When it dried, I mixed a little red paint into a bigger portion of white paint until I got a sweet shade of pink. I painted the frame, front and back, with two coats of pink paint.

I hot-glued a line of iridescent pearl beads around the frame opening.

Before I got too far along, I had to figure out how to attach my box to the back of the frame, how to attach the ornament so it would hang freely, and the mechanics of how to hang the finished piece. This photo is a little confusing, but it's looking down on the top of the frame, tilted so that you can see the top of the frame, the side of the box, and back of the cardboard box at the same time. I punched a hole in the center of the side of the box (which is now the TOP of the frame). I poked the wire ornament hanger through the hole and fiddled with it until the ornament hung in the middle of the frame opening. Then I folded the wire over the edge of the box (to the back) and taped it in place.

Next, I centered the cardboard box on the back of the frame, and held it in place with duck tape. The entire frame is quite light, so duck tape is strong enough to hold it securely.

Then I need to come up with an innovative hanging technique. I decided to use the elastic cording and  a couple paper clips. First, I made a small slit on on the side of the cardboard box, about 1/3 of the way down from the top of the frame.  I tied one end of the elastic cording onto a paper clip, and pushed the clip (and knot) through the box to the inside of the frame. (I didn't have any black paper clips, so found some that were fairly dull so they would be camoflaged in the shadows). Then I eyeballed the length of elastic cording I'd need, cut it to length, and tied the other end to the second paper clip. I made another incision on the opposite side of the box and pushed the paper clip through to the inside. Clever!

I covered the back of the cardboard box with more duck tape to give it a more finished look.

Now it was time to decorate the front! First, I hot-glued the nylon cord around the perimeter of the frame. After playing with the bits and bobs for a while, I came up with this design. In the bottom right corner, I glued the three small flowers. Then I sprinkled in some of the sequins. I cut apart some of the left-over pearls and glued one to the center of each sequins.

In the top left corner of the frame, I glued down the feather butterfly. I added more sequins and beads here.

Then I added buttons to the corners of the frame opening. I really like how the black background sparkles behind the hanging ornament!

Ta-Da!

These were the only items I didn't use. Don't be surprised if they show up later this year in another mystery box.

The second Mystery Box Challenge will be opened by the other artists tomorrow. The items might work quite nicely for an Easter decoration. I still haven't decided how I might use my supplies.