Baby love

Today is my day to design for Pam over on Tuesday Treats

I am making for you a wonderful gift or home decor item for yourself.

How many of you love the new trend of shadow boxes or painters trays?  Sometimes finding them can be hard, other times trying to fit what you want in them can be difficult due to the pre-made sizes of the boxes, and then of course you have the cost.  The following item that I have made is one that I think a parent would love to put in a nursery, but what do you do once the child is a little older?  Put it in a box and store it?  For how long?  You don't want to throw it away because of the cost but it just doesn't fit in a childs room any longer.

Problem solved!!!!!!!!!!!!!  An awesomely cute nursery item, low cost (total supplies $3.50) and very lightweight so you have no fears of hanging it above a crib, because if it falls it will not injure an infant.

Now what makes this so cheap?  it is made entirely of paper and foam board that is 2 large sheets for a dollar.

Start by deciding what Cricut cuts you want in the box, the lay it out on your Gypsy or DS and getting a rough measurement of the size box you will need.  Cut the bottom and sides from foam board.

I cut mine at 9x20 and 1 inch for the sides.  Glue together with a strong glue, Beacon's 3n1 works great as it is very strong but does not eat the exposed foam.

Then you will need to pick out papers for your background and cuts.  Make and assemble all your Cricut cuts, mine  were all from the BABY STEPS cartridge and almost all were cut at 3 inches to keep it simple.  The banner was cut from MS All Occ. cart at 1 inch.  Once you have them all cut, you can layout them out for placement and cut background papers to size

you will notice that the background papers do not line up touching, this was because I had intended to add foam pieces as dividers in the sections (but one lovely child decided to grab the last of my foam board and make drumsticks out of them) not to be doomed though I came up with another idea.

I cut a piece of heavy cardstock, at 1 1/4 inch wide, and scored at 1 inch the placed alternating cuts,  I used this to slide under the background pieces and adhere to the foam board and then adhered the background paper in place starting with the 3 horizontal lines, then moved onto to placing the smaller ones between the vertical openings.  Finally placing the cuts in with large glue dots.

Finally finishing it off by cutting strips of coordinating colorstock at 2.25 inches and scoring at 1 inch, 1.25 inch and 1.5 inch to cover the rough edges of the side walls.

Then I added a few ribbons at the top, some cute buttons on the bottom corners to cover where the corners were a bit "messy" looking.

You can see in this picture how light it is as it is just sitting on top of this picture frame, and in the second picture it is holding (after 4 days so far) by just two glue dots

You will notice the large empty box in the lower left, this will be used for a banner with the birthdate, once we are SURE of that date.