What a nightmare!

Hello everyone, what a nightmare start to my day I had! I was all set to get cracking on some projects that need to be done "yesterday" and the first job was to get out some stamps. I'd decided which ones to use last night and was already dreading the usual search amongst my, less than organised, collection! Apart from the boxes of stamps that are dotted about the place, my main collection is held in a three drawer unit that, admittedly, was not designed to hold hundreds of wooden blocks! There was I, rummaging through the layers, when the whole set of drawers completely collapsed!!! Yes, all three drawers gave up the ghost and all my stamps ended up in piles buried under each other and the remains of the drawers....wonderful! So my stamps are now sitting in the empty frame of the unit waiting for me to come up with a new storage solution...I think that some stackable trays are in order. I am now waiting for another crash, as the top of the, now drawerless unit, is weighed down with boxes of ink pads, peel offs, powders and a hundred other things. So long as the floor doesn't give way I wil cope, and, yes, I did eventually find the stamps that I was looking for!
I've taken some new photographs of the boxes, as promised, though they are still not as good as I'd like as it is rather dull here today. I'll be teaching these on two workshops at Dawn's Design Studio, one in June and the other in November. They aren't a new idea, and are a variation of the Exploding Boxes that many of us have made. But I had great fun making them, so I hope that you like them. The first one was made with papers from one of the latest K&Co ranges called Que Sera Sera (they are absolutely stunning by the way!) and I've used one of their adhesive borders around the lid. Inside the box are birds from my Swirly Birds clear stamps set which I've combined with the tiny flower from the "Count My Blessings" stamp set.
This picture shows the inside of another box and I used some of the alcohol inked metallic film and stamped butterflies onto it before cutting them out and adhering them onto acetate strips. I went a bit mad with the adhesive gems as you can see! No picture of the outside of this one as the image didn't come out very well.The last box is a little different as I had an idea to use the Owl stamp full sized on the outside whilst doing shrink plastic versions on the inside and I knew that I wanted to create a tree effect. After some thought I came up with the idea of a piece of black corrugated card which I cut into a wedge shape and then cut "twiggy" shapes into the diagonal edge. I rolled the card up with the tallest edge in the middle and stuck it into the bottom of the box - my must have product, Glossy Accents, came to the rescue for this job, as it stuck the spiral of card into place within a minute so that I wasn't forced to hold it for an age whilst it set! A little more Glossy Accents around the edges strengthened the bond and allowed me to add glitter for a slightly mystical look. The Owls were coloured with watered down Marvy Le Plume pens and I used a gold Just Glitter marker to add sparkle and a warm colour so that they look like Barn Owls when the light shines through them. I also coloured the beaks in gold to highlight them. I'll admit that I did make about twelve more shrinky owls before I was happy with the final three!!!

Apologies for the less than brilliant pictures, but I hope that they give an idea of what the boxes look like, and hope that they might inspire you to have a go. My friend Sarah has posted some photos of the weekend up at Oswaldtwistle Mills, so check out her blog (in my blog list) to see those...hooray, no pictures of me this time!!! Also check out MyTobyJug blog where Joanne has also posted some great pictures.

Well, I am going to have a cup of raspberry tea now and then back to those stamping projects! Lindsay