Square Box Chunky Book

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! 

Today we are celebrating the release of my From the Heart collection over at the Sizzix blog with a Valentine's Blog Hop! It's so exciting to see- our fabulous Design Team has gone to town and whipped up some tasty eye candy for you- make sure to head on over and see all their HEARTwarming creations! 

I decided to use the ScoreBoards Square Box die for my project... but in a different way than you might expect. 

When designing a die, I want to give good value for the money, so many of my dies function in several different ways. The box I used today measures 3 1/4" square and is a ScoreBoards die, which means it was specially designed to cut thick material like matboard or chipboard at least 1/16" thick. There is a special blade set down in the die  that perfectly cuts and scores all of the fold lines.

The Square Box can work as a gift box that opens and closes (it's big enough to hold a cupcake!), an ornament for your tree, a photo cube, or for organizing or storage. The box may be embossed, stamped, painted, inked or misted. A set of baby alphabet blocks would be adorable, don't you think? The possibilities for this die are endless! 

I used the Square Box die to create a chunky little mini-album instead of building a box with it. The die cut pieces were used to make a book cover and page signatures. This is a super versatile die- hope you take some time to explore different options for using it!

• Tear dictionary pages in half vertically and coat the back of the page with spray adhesive. Place page on the wrong (uncolored) side of a 6" x 7" piece of matboard. NOTE: You will only need two of the three panels of the long die cut piece for each book page so you don't need to cut a full size panel. Place matboard just over the edge of the second score line, die cut, then trim extra off with craft knife). 
• Cover ten pieces of matboard (I used colored scraps left over from matting projects) and then roll them through Big Shot. Cut one full panel piece for the outer cover of the book and nine smaller pieces for the pages.

    

• Distress pages with ink and blending tool.
• Rub Viva Decor Inka Gold (Gold 901) on a soft rag and apply to edges of each book signature and cover. This adds a really rich look to the book (and I also love that this ink washes off with soap and water if you get it on your hands!)
• Bend the large matboard die cut panel into a U shape. This will be your book cover and binding. 
• Fold each small signature in half. This would be a good time to arrange and decorate the cover and pages in the order you would like them to appear in the book. I used Glitz stamps, Cosmo Cricket Tiny Text stickers, rick rack, flower and butterfly dies of mine cut from some different materials such as bubble wrap, plastic packaging, old sweaters, and fun things I had left over from other projects.
• Take a piece of twine and tie each matboard signature securely into the middle of the book. This allows for movement of the pages as the book is opened, closed and moved around. The nice thick binding piece allows you to include all kinds of 3D items.

Here are some sample pages. I'm not done with the book yet but look forward to adding little tidbits here and there as they fit. This is a sampler book of my dies and includes different materials you can cut and techniques to try. 

 Butterfly die cut from packaging, alcohol inked and heated

 flowers cut from Place Card die then colored with Copics

watercolor paper flowers cut from Hydrangeas & Borders and colored 
with Copics. I die cut rickrack from fun foam and used it as a rubber stamp 
on the left page. 

 Flower, Layers with Heart Petals cut from book pages and inked

 bubble wrap Fringed Flower colored with Staz-On

 Label & Buttons die stamped with ImpressArt metal stamps on matboard

Glitz stamps

Fringed Flower, Flower, Layers #9  and DeNami love stamp

I love how this book came out! I hope it helped you to see how much you can do with the Square Box...

GIVEAWAY TIME! Leave me a comment below and tell me how you would use this die- one of you will win a Square Box die for yourself! I'll announce the winner here on my blog on Tuesday so stop back then to hear who the winner is... And don't forget to check out all of the DT's amazing work- head over to the Sizzix blog now- there's a nice giveaway over there too. Thanks for stopping by!

XOXO Eileen