Method Monday: 2-5-7-10 Box

Good Morning! It's Taylor here, and I'm excited to get started with our very first Method Monday of 2011. I have a really fun, easy project today....we're going to make a 2-5-7-10 box. These are great for Valentine's Day favors for the kids at school (or people in your office), birthday party favors, baby shower gifts, and pretty much any other occasion you need to make fast, cute gift packaging for! Let's get started.

Here are the supplies you need for this project (not all pictured below):

• 8 1/2" x 11" piece of cardstock
• Patterned paper (as needed/desired for decorating - on this project I have used Prima's Romance Collection)
• Decorative edge punch (or decorative scissors)
• Crop-a-dile (or handheld circle punch)
• Scoring board (here, Martha Stewart, but Scor Pal or a paper trimmer with scoring blade will work)
• Scissors
• Sticky Strip
• Pop-Dots
• Any InStyle Stamps image you choose
• Copics (for this project, E00, E40, E25, E27, E29, E35, E37, G20, YG03, YG63, YR21, R27)
• Ribbon, primas, brads (and other embellishments as needed/desired)
• Nestabilities
• Ink, sponge

 Your first step is to place the cardstock lengthwise on your scoring board and score at 2", 5", 7", and 10". Next, turn the cardstock and score it at 2" and 7". Once that is finished, hold the cardstock horizontally (as pictured below) with the 2" section at the top, and the smallest section on the left side. Cut off all of the 2" portions at the top, with the exception of the largest one on the left -this will be your box flap. Trim the top of the arrow piece at an angle, to create a tab for adhesive. Along the bottom, cut upwards along the score lines to create 4 small flaps (which will be the bottom of the box). Completely remove the section on the left. When all of this is done, your piece will look like the one below:

Make sure that you use a bone folder or scoring tool (I used my tool that accompanies the Martha Stewart scoring board) to crisply fold along each score line, to give your box clean edges. Place a piece of red sticky strip along the long tab (with the angled edge) to close the box on the side, and begin assembling it. When folding the bottom, be sure to fold the small flaps in first and then the larger ones (as pictured below):

Place one more piece of sticky strip along the large flap on the box bottom, and seal it closed. 

Use you decorative edge punch or scissors to add some detail to the closure flap. Once that part is done, you will have something that looks like this:

You will want to "pinch" your box closed - line up the front and back of the box top and pinch it together.  Use your Crop-a-dile to punch two holes in the closure flap (just the flap at this point!). Now, close the flap over the box and use a pencil to mark where the holes should be. Insert the Crop-a-dile into the box and punch those two holes out.  Thread the ribbon through as shown below: 

 Now it is time to decorate your project! I used a new digi image we are releasing this month, Mom Love.  I printed her out twice - once as part of my base and once to cut out and pop up on dimensionals. So for that image (pictured below, on the left) I colored her well, with all of the details and shading necessary. For my base image, I just gave her general color, so that the small bit you can see once she is popped up on pop dots is colored and not blank. I left the image inside the Nestie and sponged around the outside, to give it warmth in the middle and a clean, crisp white edge. Because I printed my image small, it is hard to see that I colored her eyes following our tutorial. Click on the picture to see a larger view! If you do, you will also be able to see where I spilled a drop of water on my base image - good thing I was planning to cover it with the image I cut out ;)

Here is my finished box! I added a bit of patterned paper, a cardstock die cut from the same collection, and a few Primas. It's filled with candy, and hidden on a shelf until Valentine's Day. This was a super easy, quick project to make. I'm going to make more for my daughter's teachers, I think!

Have you ever tried one of these before? We'd love to see what kind of 2-5-7-10 boxes you can create! Feel free to leave us a link to your post, so we can leave you some love.