I'm Back and I apologize

It has been almost a month since my last post.  I've been busy, but not crafting.  I was called out of town for work over the last three weeks (don't you hate when life gets in the way of your crafting).  Well, the work thing is over and now I have a little time to craft and blog.  So, I'm sorry I haven't provided you with new projects. 

While I've been gone from the blog I had my first paying craft customer.  A friend works for a group of nuns in Cleveland, OH.  They were putting together some gift bags and asked me to make pillow boxes with their logo.  I created the logo using SCAL and placed it on the pillow box.  While there are a number of pillow boxes on Cricut carts, I decided to use one I created.  I didn't want to try and match the positions from SCAL to Design Studio and I needed SCAL for the logo.

Here is a picture of the completed pillow box.

Here is 150 of them on their way to Cleveland.

Before they placed the order, they asked me for some samples.  This is what I sent to them.  I love these small boxes with the chocolates but I must say, in this situation I was glad they chose the pillow boxes.  The Ghiradelli boxes are gorgeous but they take a lot more work to put them together.  I was a little nervous about how I was going to get them done with the other things I had going on.

This project also reminded me how important it is to use the correct adhesive.  Luckily I was working with friends, otherwise I think I would have lost this commission.  I made a huge mistake and grabbed my ATG gun to afix the boxes.  Unfortunately, while it is a wonderful adhesive for most things, it wasn't nearly strong enough for the boxes.  I bought score tape for the actual boxes.  So, word to the wise, use the right adhesive.  I feel like adhesive is a little like the porridge and beds in the Three Little Bears, you don't want it too strong, or too weak, too messy or take too long to dry.  It needs to be just right.  Even after I found the correct adhesive, score tape, I started out using tape that was 1/4 inch wide.  I was so afraid the boxes would open that I didn't want to take any chance.  The only problem is it didn't make nearly as clean of an edge.  On most of the boxes I switched to 1/8 inch wide.  It was perfect, held well and didn't make the edges of the boxes gummy.

Here is my first attempt at the correct color for the boxes.  I now have 100 lovely pillow boxes that I haven't decided what I'll do with them.  I'm thinking they might make an appearance at the advent festival.  They look "christmas-y" to me.  This just goes to show, you can't always trust the color printed from your printer or on your computer screen.  Eventually, I borrowed a Pantone swatch book from a printer I was working with and found a blue I could live with, even if I didn't love it.  I must say, bazille has a LOT of different colors. 

It was a fun project, even if I had trouble matching the colors.  This is one of those times when I thought the Imagine could be very useful.  In general I'm quite happy with my Expression but I was trying to match the exact PMS color and I was living in Charleston, West Virginia.  They didn't have nearly the paper store options I have in Atlanta.

I must do a shout out to a store in Charleston.  Almost Heaven seems like one of those local scrapbook stores that many folks remember fondly or rave about.  They had a number of papers that I haven't seen recently.  They also knew their customers well.  They carried a lot of paper in the colors of their local high school and college teams.  They had more hunting/fishing/outdoors papers and stickers than I've seen anywhere.  For anyone that thinks you can't make good "guy" pages they haven't been to Almost Heaven.  If you are in the area, I recommend checking them out.  The owner is very friendly and willing to help, even if she thought I was crazy.