Celebrate 4th of July!

This week's challenge over at Heart2Heart Challenges is a color challenge.  The suggested colors are Barn Red, Bamboo, and our choice of blue.  Since 4th of July is right around the corner, and I could use something fun for my home decor, I decided to make this cute little box. 

Can you believe this box is made out of drink coasters????  Read on to find out how........

A while back, I picked up some of these coasters at Michaels.  Didn't know what I was going to do with them, but I knew I would figure it out!  :-)  There are 8 in a pack, and they were on sale for $1/pack.  They measure 4x4, so I just took some cardstock, trimmed it to 4x4, decorated it, and adhered it to the top of the coaster with Liquid Glass (this is seriously the best adhesive ever!). Liquid Glass dries dimensionally, so make sure you have smoothed it out before adhering your cardstock, otherwise you'll have little bumps underneath your paper.  I like to use a sponge paintbrush to smooth it out, making sure the glue goes completely to the edges.  Once the cardstock was glued on, I cut off the edges that were hanging over the corners, then used my awesome sanding block to  smooth out the rest of the edges.  I could have inked the edges, but I kind of liked the contrast of the white core.  :-0) 

I then used my Crop-a-Dile to punch holes in the sides.  It took me a few time to figure out how to thread the ribbon so that the bow ended up on the outside, but I finally realized that if I worked it like shoelaces, I could get it.  Once all 4 sides were laced together, I used a 5th coaster for the bottom of the box.  Again, I used Liquid Glass as my glue.  I turned the whole thing upside down, applied Liqud Glass to the bottom of each coaster, and centered the 5th coaster on top of the other 4.  I put a book on top of it, and let it sit for a few minutes, just to make sure everything was adhered securely.

I cut out the circles with my Cricut (I think they are 3"), then stamped them using Cranberry ink, for a tone-on-tone look.  The stars are chipboard.  Now, Close To My Heart sells Dimensional Elements Stars that would have been ideal for this project, but I had used all but one of mine for another project.  At first, I thought I was out of luck, but then I came up with a way to work it out.  Did you know that CTMH sells plain chipboard?? 

 It comes in sheets that are 9" x 12", and they are the same weight/thickness of the Dimensional Elements.  I grabbed some of that, traced the star that I had left over, and cut it out.   Yay!  I covered the stars with Bamboo cardstock, sanded them down, then stamped the letters on with Outdoor Denim ink and the new Polka-Dot alphabet stamps.  The stars were then glued to the top of the circles.

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I had extra plant stakes left over from my flower box class in April, so I used those to adhere the toppers to.  Originally I thought I was going to use the Create-A-Shade paint with some reinker, and paint the stakes, but I didn't have any Outdoor Denim reinker.  Now, I have enough of those little bottles of craft paint from other projects that I probably could have come up with something that looked OK, but I hate it when things don't match! I wondered what would happen if I just inked up the stakes with my ink pad.  Using a dauber, I sponged each stake with the ink, and it worked perfectly!  Perfectly matched, that is!  I then simply hot-glued the stakes to the back of the circles with the words.

I cut up some flower foam, and put it in the box, then arranged the stakes how I wanted them.  Added a little homemade shred (ran some Colonial White through my crimper, then used the Martha Stewart shredding scissors to cut it all up).  All done!  As I'm posting these pictures, it's looking a little blah to me, so I think I will probably go back and add some bling to the coasters, and some ribbon or buttons or some other embellishments to the circles.  But for right now, it looks pretty stinkin' cute sitting on the fireplace mantle in my living room!  :-) 

Thanks for looking!