Love Letters Storage Box with Deb Riddell

Hello, Deb here to share with you another project featuring some of my favourite embellishments and stencils from Southern Ridge Trading Company for our current challenge.  I used the Mini Nested Stamp Frames, Iron Hinges 1 and the 4 Leaf Clover stencil in the making of my card or letter storage box.

The mini nested stamped frame was the inspiration for this project; the stamp shape of the frame made me think of letters which led me to love letters, which led me to the idea of making a box to store those letters in and the rest was history!

I started out by choosing a paper from Tim Holtz’s Correspondence paper stash and then used the Postage Stamp die with a Mini Heart Mover & Shapers die inset to cut out my postage stamp background.  I then embossed the die cut with Southern Ridge’s 4 Leaf Clover Stencil and highlighted the embossed areas with Frayed Burlap Distress ink.

One of the gents from Tim Holtz’s Possibilities stamp set was stamped onto white card with Black Soot Archival ink and clear embossed.  The background around the stamped image was then coloured with more Frayed Burlap Distress ink.

I chose the third largest nested stamp frame and coloured it with Blueprint Sketch Distress stain and sealed it with some satin varnish once it had dried (sorry, I got carried away and forgot to take an in progress picture so here’s a closeup of the finished project).  As you can see, the gentleman was centered behind the heart cut out on the postage stamp die cut and then the mini nested frame was centered overtop of the heart.

I repeated the same colouring and sealing procedure with one of the decorative hinges from the Iron Hinges 1 set (again no in progress pics, sorry!) and then chose the ‘love’ Typed Token and coloured it with some Aged Mahogany Distress paint.  A small heart stud from my stash was coloured in the same way and adhered overtop the hole in the Typed Token with E6000 glue.

I stamped ‘love letters’ from a Fiskars stamp set onto a vintage ticket I had in my stash.  The red ticket was a bit bright for my layout so I first coloured the ticket with some Barn Door Distress ink and then added some Frayed Burlap.

I chose some vintage ephemera from Tim Holtz’s Emporium Ephemera pack and coloured the edges with a bit of Frayed Burlap Distress ink.

All of the elements were added to the postage stamp die cut background.

And the assembled collage was then adhered on to the top of a box I made using papers from Tim Holtz’s Crowded Attic paper stash.  I randomly stamped some script over the top of the box using the Ledger Script stamp and Jet Black Archival ink and then drew around the edge of the stamp die cut with a black Pigma Micron pen to give it some definition.

I now have a box to store some of my completed cards and tags rather than having them in a plain old file folder, yay!

Hope that you’ve enjoyed seeing my love letters storage box made with more of my favourite supplies from Southern Ridge Trading Company.

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- Mini Nested Stamp Frames

- Iron Hinges 1

- 4 Leaf Clover stencil

Other Supplies Used:

- Tim Holtz/Sizzix: Postage Stamp die; Mini Hearts Movers & Shapers die

- Tim Holtz/Advantus: Correspondence paper stack; Crowded Attic paper stack; Typed Token; Emporium Ephemera pack

- Tim Holtz/Ranger Ink: Distress ink; Archival ink; Distress paint; Distress stain

- Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous: Ledger Script stamp; Possibilities stamp

- Fiskars: Love Simple Stick stamps

- Pigma Black Micron Pen

- Miscellaneous: Scissors, E600 glue, adhesive, Aleene’s Box Maker, paper cutter, paint brush, satin varnish, metal heart stud

I hope that you will be inspired to join in our My Favourites challenge.  You have a chance to win 4 designs from the online store - chipboard.ca - a $20.00 (before tax) retail value of YOUR OWN CHOOSING!  Can’t wait to see what you link up, happy creating!

Deb xo