Little Love Notes

We’re almost halfway through the month of January and Valentine’s Day is just a month away! It’s a great time to start thinking about the little projects you can make for family and friends. I have an affinity for little love notes. Excuse my sappiness for a moment…my husband and I have been leaving handwritten treasures for each other since we met. Sometimes it’s a post-it note, sometimes it’s a hastily scribbled sentence on the bathroom mirror using a dry erase marker. In a busy life with two small and very needy kids, it’s a nice way to connect and reassure each other that we’re still happy to be together.

I have also been tucking notes into my daughter’s lunch box since she started preschool at 2 years old. I know she can’t yet read, but some day soon she will be able to and I want to be in the habit of leaving my kids little notes of encouragement. An encouraging word cheers a person up and I want to model that behavior for my kids so that some day they might choose to encourage others with a written note.

My tutorial for you today is a sweet little way to share a love note with someone. I decided to make paper fortune cookies and a little take out box in which to transport them.

Digital Supplies:

Kelleigh Ratzlaff’s Take-Out Box Template

The Old Garden Gate: the Kit by Sugarplum Paperie (I used the word strips and a cream paper for the doily)

Sweet Nothings by Karen Lewis

Doilie Shapes set 1 by The Cutting Files

Physical Supplies:

Epson premium presentation paper
brads
circle die or punch or a round object about 3″ in diameter that you can trace and cut out
glue dots
scissors
thick fun foam pad
embossing stylus
bone folder
glitter & glitter adhesive (I use Zig’s two-way glue pen)
various embellishments to decorate your box

I started by clipping paper from the Sweet Nothings kit to the take-out box template. I added the LOVE element from the kit to the document, and then added the word strips from The Old Garden Gate to act as the fortunes for the paper cookies. I created a second 8.5×11 canvas containing four 4.25×5.5 rectangles to which I clipped four different papers from the Sweet Nothings kit to make my fortune cookies.

I printed everything out and started cutting.

I had intended to use my Martha Stewart scoring board to score the take out box, but I had a challenging time lining up the lines with the grooves on the scoring board. I pulled out my thick piece of fun foam and an embossing stylus, and used the straight edge of my bone folder to score the lines. If you don’t have fun foam you can use any object that has a little give to it – a folded up towel or a firm pillow would work. Just be careful not to apply so much pressure that you poke a hole in your paper (don’t ask how I know that).

Once the box was cut and scored, I started folding it. Kelleigh’s template comes with an excellent tutorial on how to fold and secure the box. I decided to use glittery pink brads to hold the flaps to the wide sides of the box. I used a paper piercer to create the holes and then pushed the brad through one section at a time.

I gave the box a little squeeze to give it a nice, full shape.

After the box was constructed, I moved on to making the paper cookies. I cut out the word strips using my Fiskars paper trimmer, and then folded them in half so they would fit inside the cookies. I used my Nestabilities circle die to make the circles for the cookies. I rolled the circle into a tube and used a large glue dot to hold the seam together.

Then I added the folded up fortune paper. After that, I held the cookie in my hand and bent it in the middle. I used a small glue dot to attach the sides of the cookie in the center.

I decided to embellish the side of the box with a doily collage. I used a doily shape from The Cutting Files Doilie Shapes set 1 and cut it out of a cream paper from The Old Garden Gate using my Silhouette SD cutter (for more information on electronic die cutting machines, check out these articles: Die Cutting Machines: Part 1 and Part 2). I LOVE these doily cutting files and can’t wait to use more of them. The doily made up the base of my collage. I then added a red chipboard heart by Heidi Swapp that I’ve had in my stash for a number of years. I cut out the LOVE element from the Sweet Nothings kit and added crystal PK Glitz glitter to it. I also added a pretty button to the O. Buttons make fabulous embellishments and it’s very easy to snap off the shank using a pair of needle-nose pliers. Be careful, sometimes the shank can go flying across the room (it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye!). I cut a small flower using another Nestabilities die and attached the silver bow on top of it. I added a flat-backed pearl to the top of the bow and put it in the top corner of the heart. Clustering elements on hybrid projects is very similar to clustering on a digital layout, except for the fact that if your flower isn’t the right size or color, you have to dig through your stash instead of simply being able to transform the object to the right size and recolor it to match perfectly!
I used a 3-D glue dot to attach the doily collage to the box for some more dimension.

I placed the four fortune cookies into the take out box and am excited to present this little gift to someone on Valentine’s Day!

Little Love Notes

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