Box It Up - Tutorial

Hello crafty friends and welcome to the AVJ monthly tutorial post.  Julia (Create with Me)  here this month as the hostess for the September challenge "Box it Up" sharing a quick tutorial of how I put together my Halloween Haunted House Treat Box.

I often make projects like this to sell at my church at various holidays - so I'm making maybe 10 of them - and while I want them to look vintage, spooky and 'professional' (!?!) -  I also want them to be easy to make!

To that end - I used already distressed-look papers from Tim Holtz Regions Beyond and Materialize Paper Stash pads which saved me the time of distressing them! Instead of using matboard, I cut the house pieces out of black cardstock and again from the patterned paper, then glued them together.  It makes them sturdy but not quite as bulky as when you use matboard.

I cut out the box pieces using Eileen Hull's new House Ornament Die along with some pieces (chimney, window frames, roof trim and door) from her older House Pocket Die (which just happen to be to the same scale!) I cut out various faces from one of the papers in the Regions Beyond and mounted them on foam tape behind the windows so you really feel they are 'inside' the house.

I double layered all the window frames for extra thickness and rubbed them with Bronze Age Metallique Wax from Prima.  I did the same to the Irongate Fence pieces as well as the cat and bat - all older Tim Holtz/Alterations dies.  I put two chimneys on the roof (see 3rd photo below) - as a haunted house would surely have at LEAST two giant fireplaces right?!

Here is my Halloween Treat Box - from all sides!

And the spooky faces in the windows close up!

 There's even a skeleton in the attic!

And finally - the treats found inside when you open the bottom of the box!  River Rock Chocolate Candies!

I hope you enjoyed seeing how I put this together . There is still plenty of time to join in our Box It Up challenge, link up by 10/3.  You will find all the challenge details HERE along with some fabulous Box It Up projects from my fellow Creative Guides.

As always thank you for joining us at AVJ and we hope you all have a creative weekend!

A warm welcome back to Lynn Stevens

I am so pleased to welcome Lynn back to A Vintage Journey as a Guest Creative Guide. If you have visited Lynn’s blog at all, you will surely know about her love of all things Halloween and when Lynn guested earlier in the year she specifically mentioned that she would love to be involved for our Halloween theme. So here she is ………

Lynn Stevens has been involved with Art through out her life. She has had her own Mural and Faux Painting business for 15 Years. In her spare time she enjoys making altered art, stamping and designing jewelry often incorporating vintage or found objects into her art. She has been on many design teams. A Gilded Life, Retro Cafe Arts, Artistic Outpost, Alpha Stamps, I Brake For Stamps, Oxford Impressions, Gingersnap Creations and has been a guest designer for Technique Junkies and Scrolls work and Firecracker Designs By Pamela. She's been published in many issues of Stampington magazines and Altered Arts magazines. When she's not in her studio you can find her combing through junk shops, antique stores or yard sales looking for undiscovered treasures. Her blog address is.
http://trashtotreasureart.blogspot.com

http://www.etsy.com/shop/razzledazzlestamps.

 

I adore Tim's Halloween dies and knew I wanted to create something extra special.

I had a Christmas tree advent calendar that was just waiting for a makeover.

The inspiration comes from Tim's configuration boxes.

but I wanted to fill them with Halloween goodies so I opted for the tree re-purposed to do the trick

Center stage is set using Tim's dies.  Distress inks and some idea-ology.

Now isn’t his such a cool way to upcycle something using it in a similar way and with the same purpose but giving it a new theme and redesigning all the box front and embellishments. I love how the little scene has been created to look like a haunted house surrounded by the graveyard and all the ghosties and ghouls have come visiting.

Thank you Lynn for sharing your creativity with us and for making such a gorgeous configuration goodie box.

I know there will be further details of this fabulous make on Lynn’s blog so please take a visit to Trash to Treasure and see.

We are looking forward to seeing more of your entries this week for the Halloween To Die For theme. You have till Thursday at 6 pm (BST) and then we will be back again on Friday morning to start the next wonderful challenge which will be hosted by our lovely S@ndy.

Have a fabulous week filled with good moments and hopefully some creative time for you.

hugs Brenda xxx

Challenge 17 - Halloween - To Die For

Hello Fellow Travellers, Anne here with a new challenge for you. Firstly, thank you so much for your wonderful entries to Terry's Heavy Metal challenge, you always impress us with your creativity!

You can probably guess from the title that we are asking you to use dies this time to make your Halloween creation. It does not need to be scary (but it would be fun if it was) but it does need to have at least one die and it must be strongly influenced by the style of Tim Holtz please.

Please ensure you are familiar with our Rules to ensure that you are in with a chance of winning a prize.

As always, one lucky winner, chosen by the team, will win a £10 shopping voucher from our wonderful sponsors Country View Crafts. We will also be choosing three Pinworthies who will feature on our Pinterest page and they will receive a badge to display on their blog.

My fellow Creative Guides have created THE most wonderful Design Team pieces to inspire you!

Anne

Halloween is one of my favourite times of the year, I love when the children come to the door, in their costumes to 'trick or treat'. I have used many of Tim's dies to create this shadow box. For more details please visit my blog.

Jennie

I had great fun creating this Halloween piece from Tim's Luminary Die and it looks great with a light inside. I managed to use lots of different dies to complete my project but it was lacking a pumpkin so this is handmade from paper clay! There are more pictures and details HERE on my blog but I hope you have as much fun creating your challenge piece as I did mine.

Terry

I love Halloween and the fact that you can let your imaginations run wild with childish delight. Anne's "Halloween To Die For" was such a treat for me and quite a bit of fun altering this shadow box and combining spooky movers and shapers and vintage lace for my dies of choice! For all the details, you can visit me HERE. 

Nikki

It's all about die cutting and embossing for me this time round for a triptych using Tim's Vintage Cabinet die and lots of his Halloween imagery and textures. Do hop over to Addicted to Art to see the rest of the Spooky creation!

Chris

Using Tim's influence and techniques to decorate this photo' frame and make it into a shabby, vintage style piece of Halloween decor was great fun. Tim's distress paint, ink, stamps, dies and Idea-ology have all been brought together to create this feast of Halloween craftables. A full list of products and a step x step can be found here.

Astrid

Like Anne, I love Halloween, but don't actually own a lot of Halloween themed products so had to improvise. I had great fun doing so and if you want to find out more about how I put this triptych Halloween piece of home decor together, - please visit my blog.

S@ndy

Another wonderful theme for this fortnight from our host, Anne. Such a great chance to make something using our favorite products. For my cascade card I've used some of my favorite papers from Graphic 45 along with lots of Tim's dies. For more details and a tutorial please stop by "My Crafty Life On The Internet".

Julia

I'm excited to be posting my very first project as a Creative Guide today. I love Anne's choice of a Halloween theme. I embossed my clear bottle and decorated it with die cuts using two of Tim's dies, and several Idea-ology pieces. You will find lots of photos and details on my blog post here.

Jenny 

Anne's challenge description got my creative cogs whirring at an alarming pace as I toyed with the idea of which dies to employ - an ATB, a mini book, oh the possibilities were endless! Then Tim Holtz released the latest 12 Tags of 2014 tutorial/challenge and (with the well timed arrival in the post of some new Distress Spray Stains) I decided to keep it simple and make a die cut laden Halloween card following Tim's techniques and ideas. You can see more on my blog.

Julie

This has been such an amazing challenge that Anne has chosen and is my first project with A Vintage Journey. Tim's products make fabulous spooky scenes and his Halloween stamps gave me so much inspiration. If you would like to see what's inside the cupboard and more about how my project was created and what influenced me, please pop over to my blog here.

Jools

I love Halloween so I couldn't wait to get started, my inspiration came from the amazing Configurations box and fabulous adornments that featured in the launch of the Laboratories Range

I decided to create a secret book of Potions & Poisons to see the how I made it and find out what's inside Please pop over to my blog 

Wow, what an abundance of fabulous inspiration! I do hope you feel inspired to get your dies out and create something for our challenge. You have until 18:00 BST on Thursday 30 October to enter. I hope you have lots of fun making something!

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