Congrats Grads!

Two of my cousins just graduated from college and I am on my way to a family BBQ tonight to celebrate their success! We got them gift cards, and since I have like 200 plain white pillowboxes sitting around I had to decorate a couple to put the gift cards in. I decided not to use one of the pillowboxes I had decorated before because I wanted something that was brighter and more colorful and more appropriate for a congratulatory gift.

The scrapbooking paper I used for both of these boxes came from the same big stack. For each box I used two different coordinating papers. I made Peter's first, cutting out a 5-inch strip of the striped paper and wrapping it around the width of the blank box. The other paper I had was a bunch of squares so I wrote CONGRATS and PETER on two strips within the design, then cut them out and used double-sided tape to attach them to the box.

For Kari's box, I selected a nice spring green plaid and then I wanted to use a polka-dot paper to write CONGRATS and KARI. However, when I wrote out CONGRATS it was longer than the box because there was a lot of white space between the dots. Taking a tip from my sewing knowledge I decided to box pleat the paper, in effect making the word pop up away from the background. I think it turned out pretty cool!