But that's not all folks... Matchbox Shrine the second...

Being a glutton for punishment I signed up for two entries in the Matchbox Shrine Swap - so here's the second shrine I made for scrappyyo/Yolanda. She had also asked for an open theme, but with "no pink fluffy cuteness" - not specifically being a pink person myself I can go for that!

So I went with purple... and lime...

This time it was a Swan Vesta matchbox, and I kinda went with the style of *the* matchbox I got from Kate Crane with the little handle do-hickey at one end... the cover was painted with purple acrylic paint and then various letters were mod podge'd on top. I then cut the letters A B C together with their shadows using my Cricut Mini and stuck them on top.

Following on with the alphabet theme there's a sheet of alphabet primer cards in one of TH's paper stacks which are almost the perfect size to fit in a Swan Vesta matchbox, so I cut them out, trimmed them a little and then coloured them in using my Pro-markers.

I then divided them into 2 piles, A-M and N-Z, and glued them back to back in order, sandwiching a piece of ribbon between them.

The ribbon was then glued into the base of the matchbox tray and covered with a piece of card which I had coloured using TH's wrinkle-free ink method (sweep 2 colours of distress ink across your craft sheet, spritz with water and drag your card thru it...) I'd been having a play and made a whole batch of pieces of cardstock approx 6"x4", just perfect for cutting up and using on other projects!

The other end of the ribbon was sandwiched between another two pieces of the same cardstock and one of TH's phrases stamped on top - I love this saying, it can be applied to almost everything I do lol...

I liked it, Yolanda liked it - so job done xx

UKS Matchbox Shrine Swap...

I think one of the projects I have had most fun with recently was this one... take a matchbox (any size) and decorate it to turn it into a shrine... the thread on UKScrappers got rapidly out of hand (alongside the thread for the screen swap which I'll come to later)...

I hadn't really had any bright ideas for what to do, I had been kicking a few thoughts around but nothing was floating my boat, when the thread plunged headlong into the madness that concerned tortoises hibernating in Hannah's fridge... I kid you not, she said it was the perfect temperature for them and that altho it seemed a bit weird it worked... well that was it... the thread disintergrated into total mayhem and general depravity and the most brilliant of ideas began to skulk across my mind...

I'd been paired up with Rebecca (our hostess) whether by luck or judgement I'll never know... but as she seemed most tickled by the whole tortoise concept (altho by that stage we'd mentally tucked them into coolboxes I think!) it became obvious what I had to do - turn a cooks matchbox into a wooden crate and stick a toy tortoise inside it... and pray that French Customs can take a joke and not destroy it en route...

So... a wooden crate needs thin balsa wood sheeting to cover the top and sides with thin strips to represent the batoning... balsa wood supports inside for a framework, grungepaper strap and a magnetic closure and a coat of stain...

Not forgetting the jump-ring chains to hold the lid open - didn't have any ready-made chain so had to fiddle around with a couple of pairs of tiny-nosed pliers and make my own lengths of chain!

Give it all a coat of brown paint inside to hide the wobbly edges and then fill with chopped up beige raffia, which looks a lot like straw... and nestle your toy tortoise inside...

Rebecca loved it!