Bigsby's Christmas Wish

Technique:  Papercraft

Materials:
matchboxes
masking tape
corrugated card
various complimentary cards and papers
Rock Candy Stickles
miniature wooden spools
embroidery thread
adhesive
string
buttons
Distress Inks

Tools:
Sizzix Big Shot
Tim Holtz Texture Fade, woodgrain
Martha Stewart Holly Punch

This is the card as it will be given, with the easel laying flat.

I had so much fun making this little card!  He measures a wee 4" x 4" in total, so the design space was quite limited, but the multi layers gave me a lot of area to work with.  The entire card was inspired by the digi Bigsby's Christmas Wish, I wanted to create a diorama effect, so that the corrugated card with woodgrain gave the appearance of being the floorboard that Bigsby's bed was on.

The interior of the card, when completely opened.

There were a lot of steps to this card, I hope I don't bore you!  First step was to line both sides of the corrugated card (as you will see both sides).  The uppermost surface is covered with woodgrain.  This was done using Tim Holtz wood grain texture fade and a piece of manila card, and then inked with burlap, walnut stain and vintage photo distress inks with a coat of rock candy Stickles to blend the colours and give it a little sparkle.  The other surfaces are covered with a textured rich brown paper.

The sides and drawers of the matchbox are covered with small strips of manila card that have been inked with walnut stain.  I have used gel medium as the adhesive for all the major construction as it forms a very strong bond, yet it still has some flexibility to it.  Once the strips had been adhered to the match boxes and completely dried, a little sanding around the edges further added to the distressed look.  The handles are made from a jewellery toggle.  I drilled a hole through the front of the drawer and pushed through the little ring on the end of the toggle and secured it in place with a jump ring.  I've seen a few matchbox drawers that use beads as the handle, but I keep my fingernails trimmed very short so I needed something easy to grip.

Next step was to join the matchboxes together so that when the card was glued on top they didn't jiggle about and move out of place.  Looking at the photo you can see that on each side the matchboxes are arranged so that you have one short side (which acts as a drawer) and one long side.  Tape them together and then glue the 4" pieces of corrugated card into place to make a sandwich.

That's the base constructed, which gives you a 4" by 4" surface to decorate.  The easel portion of the card is manila card inked with walnut stain, and the frame is the same textured brown paper that I used to line the 'floor boards' with.  I felt this gave design continuity to the card as a whole.

Bigsby has been coloured with Copic markers as follows;
Reds: R22, R24, R27, R29
Greens: G02, G03, G05, G07
Floorboards: E31, E33, E35
Walls: E11 then 'scumbled' with the colourless blender
Bigsby: E33, E35, E37, E29
Blues: B91, B93, B95, B97
Greys: C0, C3, C5
Yellows: Y11, Y15, Y17

The 'floorboards' are decorated with a strip of corrugated card that has been brushed with white ink, topped with a torn strip of Dasher paper by Basic Grey.  A few buttons, a bit of string, some holly leaves and red seed beads.

The little wooden spools were from my local craft store, I have inked them with walnut stain and wound a few strands of embroidery floss around the core.  The sentiment and calendar are Tim Holtz, stamped onto manila and aged with vintage photo distress ink, and a touch of gold glitter glue around the edges.  I love the tie in between the sentiment and Bigsby dreaming about cheese, so cute!

Challenges, a lot this week but a lot of work went into this one!

Simon Says Stamp - Christmas in August
ABC Christmas Challenge - Make a gift or gift box (this is a combination card and gift box with four little drawers for gifts)
Sew Many Challenges - Anything Goes 
Stamps + Fun = Creativity - Christmas 
Christmas Crafting - Cute Christmas 
Paperplay Challenges - Christmas in August
Little Red Wagon - Put a critter on it 
Fussy and Fancy - Christmas in July 
Creative Belli - Non Paper Materials 

Last but not least, naturally I had to enter into into Karen's Doodles Challenge, as that is where the lovely Bigsby comes from.  Their challenge this week was to use it up.  Lots of recycled elements in this card, the matchboxes, the corrugated card was from an old cardboard box, the scraps of embroidery thread, and old buttons.