Baby’s treasure/keepsake tin

[Edited to add : The fabulous Nicole Seitler (aka Sugarplum Paperie) has offered up a Gift Certificate to her store for anyone that leaves a comment on this post, or Tweets about us or posts on Facebook. So off you go and make sure you link us up to your Twitter and Facebook posts. We'll be drawing our winner on the 28th June and the winners will be announced on here. Good luck to all!]

Welcome to another day of baby shower gift ideas here at The Hybrid Chick! I’ve made up a keepsake tin to put those baby treasures in. I was given a time capsule tin when my eldest was born and I’ve got some of my precious treasures in it such as the hospital wrist/feet tags from baby and me, baby’s first dummy, baby’s first bib, the cord clamp and the smallest bodysuit that was size 0000 and he only wore it for one week before growing out of it! You could even keep baptism gifts in here, trinkets, locks of hair, birth cards, birth notice, etc. It’s been fun to create this and one of my good friends is due any day now, so unfortunately, I won’t be giving this gift away. I love being able to give hand-made gifts to my friends and family and I’ve made it so it could be used for a boy or a girl.

Let’s start with the supplies I’ve gathered, many of which are not shown in this photograph as I just went along looking for things throughout my creating process!

• Provocraft lunch box tin
• Digital paper from MEADOWLARKkit by Sugarplum Paperie, available at The Digi Chick
• Glimmermist ‘ Garden Fairy’
• Assorted trims and ribbons
• Vellum
• Aqua brush
• Watercolour paper
• Watercolour pencils
• Metal charms – giraffe and star
• Twine
• Double-sided scrapbooking tape
• Black StazOn ink
• Glue Dots
• Inque Boutique ‘What A Feeling’ stamp set
• Heidi Swapp Edge Distresser
• Heidi Swapp ‘treasure’ clear stamp

So let’s see if I can recall how I made this project, as like I said, I just get an idea and start pulling things from here and there until I’m happy with it! That’s how my creative process works so I rarely go in with any formal plan or sketch.

First of all, I printed my two patterned papers off from the gorgeous Meadowlark kit. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get my papers to wrap all the way around the tin and you may see in the images that the seams are on the sides of the tin.

I then measured how high I wanted my paper sections to be and cut two each of them to that height by the 12 inch length. I adhered my papers with a double-sided scrapbooking tape. I could have used Mod Podge, but the tape I use is strong enough for this purpose. Before I stuck the green patterned paper down, I used my Heidi Swapp edge distresser to rough up the edges.

I decided to keep the base of the tin white, but I could have painted it with cream paint which would have blended in nicely with the colour scheme. But to cover the outer edge of the lid, I have used my double-sided tape to adhere some cream coloured lace to it.

You’ll notice that the lid has a big handle and the front of my tin has a clasp and these items made it a little more difficult to stick my papers down. I fiddled around with a rough paper template that I had created to get the right sized gaps so that my digital papers would sit nicely. I trimmed away my digital papers with some small paper snips until they fitted nicely.

My cutting does leave a lot to be desired but I rather like the shabby look and using the edge distresser also took a little more off the paper than I needed, but it’s not like there’s an ugly colour glaring out at me from the base of the tin! Once it’s embellished, you won’t even notice these uneven gaps anyway.

Because the black handle does not match with my baby theme, I raided my ribbon jars and gathered an assortment of trims and ribbons. I tied them in a random fashion until the handle was completely covered.

TIP : Rather than precut your ribbon pieces, I grab the whole ribbon roll/length, tie it at one end of that length, then cut it. It’s so much easier rather than trying to tie up small lengths with big fat fingers!

Now to personalise the tin so that you know what it’s for!

Something very subtle on an already-busy handle – I have used some twine to tie on two metal charms – one of a giraffe and one of a star. You’ll see it in the last photo on the left hand side of the handle.

I would love to have added lots of bling and sparkle to this tin, but I thought I’d keep it neutral in case the receiver is using it for a baby boy. So to get my sparkle, I decided to go with spraying some Glimmermist around the box. It’s a very pale green and just adds a slight touch of shimmer.

For the front of the tin, I have stamped the wings image in Staz On ink onto watercolour paper and used watercolour pencils to give it some colour. I have then used some pop dots to adhere the word ‘treasure’ to the front of the box. This was stamped onto vellum in StazOn ink. Vellum is a non-pourous paper so you need to use a permanent, fast drying ink which StazOn is and is especially suited to surfaces like metal, glass, plastic and vellum.

I had all intentions of making up some little index cards to pop inside this box from the Meadowlark kit as Nicole has some gorgeous little wordart phrases that would be appropriate to record so many memories of a baby (here is the story, the most precious thing, always remember this, etc) but I have run out of time. Maybe that will be another follow up post!

So want to see my final keepsake tin?

Other Articles by skyezak:

• Stamps + Digital = So Much Versatility! - October 4th, 2009
• Personalised baby's name gift - September 28th, 2009
• Recording memories of your little ones - August 19th, 2009
• Time to start those Christmas cards! - July 22nd, 2009
• Win a gift card to Sugarplum Paperie's store! - June 25th, 2009