1:12 scale Christmas boxes - Super bumper edition printable! :D

Happy Christmas! I'm a tiny bit late with this one. I haven't even got my 1:1 decorations out of the attic yet, but the miniature ones appear to have been brought down. Priorities! :D

Quite a few of the images used for this printable are from Joannes flickr site Take a break. Joanne very kindly uploads a lot of ephemera for other crafters to use free of charge. She used to make dollshouses too! Small world eh? Other images were very poor quality sourced from eBay and fixed up for printing, which I'll probably explain more about in the future, for example the doubl-glo box was very low resolution, and both tinsel boxes are made from copying and pasting bits and pieces together ala Dr Frankenstein :D

The Santa (who needs his face repainted) is an old resin Christmas decoration, the Christmas lights were made using Miyuki beads and green thread for the wire. The plug is a piece of dowel, coloured with felt tip and with wire as pins. I used a plastic clothing label tie to create little bulb tips in each Miyuki bead (very hard to see). The miniature tree is a handmade bottle brush trimmed into a tree shape, with some railway modellers flock applied and no hole beads, and it's unfinished! :D Sort of threw everything together for this scene!  One of the bulbs has fallen off :(

For the printable, I recommend using a sharp craft knife for cutting out the boxes! I used one of those Swan Morton ones.

For best results print at Fine quality, on to 220GSM card.

Link for PDF below.

Christmas boxes

After printing lightly spray with fixative (or hairspray) to seal the ink.

If you need any tips on cutting out the boxes, etc, for a neat fit, the start of this post has a few. I find tabs annoying to cut out and unpredictable at this size (making the box lid too tight for the base etc.), so I make tabs later on, using paper. See the bottom half of this post for a picture explanation, under the title Shoeboxes and boxes.

I recently bought a bone creaser/folder, highly recommended if you do a lot of this sort of thing! It has saved my nails, which were actually wearing away from all of the creasing....

Cut out all of the windows before cutting out the individual boxes. For the fiddly windows,ie, curvy, spiky areas, use short cuts to help preserve the details, rather than trying to follow the line in one go.

Unlike the other boxes, DO NOT cut out the window on the two tinsel boxes, until the sides have been creased. The tinsel is a fly tying material called Chenille Sparkle, which I bought from Troutcatchers. If your husband/son etc, fishes, I wholly support you nicking from his stash of fly tying equipment :D There are some card pieces in the printable that you can use to wrap the tinsel around.

On the printable G, W, R stands for Green, White, Red, just pencil those onto the boxes, so you know which base belongs to which lid, as the sizes are slightly different. The dividers are also on the template, and are for these 3 boxes. 6mm beads and smaller will fit the boxes.

Unfortunately I couldn't mark out the cuts for printing, so you will need to measure and mark those out. Each slot should be 7mm apart. Make the first cut for a slot, then place the knife directly beside it and make another cut, then use the tip of the knife to remove the "slot" waste. Then the pieces will all slot together nicely.

Some of the other boxes in the printable. You can use cellophane of some sort, to create plastic windows too,  I haven't done that yet....

If you cut out the middle row of trees on the Holiday snow box, you can then put a bit of cotton wool or wadding in the box, and it will show through.

I've included some Christmas Cards in the printable, not shown here. The card might be a bit too thick, but if you run your finger nail or bone creaser along the edges of the card, it should give the illusion of  thinner card.

There are also interior cards for the two Christmas Light/ Lamp boxes, which are a bit awkward to fit, but you can play about with them, as you see fit. I ended up chopping some off.

The plain white card bases (in the printable) need to be creased and folded so that the black lines will be on the inside.

Any idea how to make miniature icicle ornaments? :D

And I think that's it! They would make nice little Christmas ornaments too, with a bit of thread on them and everything glued into place. I would love to see them in a Christmas setting, stall or attic, anything really, so if you make them up, leave a link below :)

 Also, I recently received a package of exquisite miniatures from Pepper, which I can't wait to post about, then that'll be me for this year! :D But even though it's a bit early, I think it is anyway, I wish you all a Happy Christmas, in case I miss you next time due to it being that time of the year ie. Hectic! :D

Bloomers and Camisole FREE GIVEAWAY PRIZE COMPETITION!!!!!!!!

Camisole and Bloomers will include everything in photograph (except the rose). Robinson & Cleaver Ltd. was a real department store in Belfast, that was around in the Victorian era. The clothes label thread is tucked behind the button and can be easily lifted off. 

Exterior of the box. Slightly on the large side, but I didn't want to compromise the safety of the camisole and bloomers. This would look nice tucked under a bed :)

 So, now that I have the 1:12 scale Camisole and Bloomers tutorial out of the way, I have been left with two almost identical sets, and I would like to give away the new set, shown below, to one of my current followers on blogspot. The last one in was Diane, at 106. (Hi diane :D)

To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment below. The giveaway is open to all of the current followers of my blog, anywhere in the world. I hope the non english speakers, recognize the words "free ", "giveaway", "prize", "competition", I put a few exclamation marks in the title, to grab attention too.

I am not sure how giveaways normally work, but as I have only 106 followers at present, the chances of winning are a lot higher. So I would highly recommend not spreading the word :D Sly, eh? 

The giveaway will be open for the next two weeks, closing on Saturday 7th September at Midnight (GMT). On the Sunday after, I will write the names on paper, and do the draw, and announce the winner that same day. They will be posted as soon as possible, within the week of receiving the winners address.

The only terms and conditions of entering the draw, are that you must post a picture on your blog, showing the bloomers and camisole in their new home, if you can, as they are my babies and I am sad to see them go :D

Good luck!

P.s. In the rush to get the giveaway online, I put the expiry date down as 7th July, it is actually the 7th of September, thanks for pointing that out Carmen! :D