Paper is BLISS: BURIED TREASURE

Hi All

I adore all three of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, (although I do not pretend to really understand whats going on in the third one - am I the only one!?) and you've just gotta LOVE Johnny Depp!!!!

Whilst shopping the other day in Tesco I found some real cute little pirate hats and some little swords and I thought how cool would it be to make a mini treasure chest to go with these. Well, here's what I came up with...

I used the base from Lauren Meaders Bouncing Baby Buggy template to make the base of the chest out of black cardstock. I then cut 1" wide strips of kraft cardstock and inked the edge with some dye ink. I fixed these to the base in layers and then trimmed to size. I used some of strips silver cardstock to make a 'metal' edge around the top which was folded over the top and inside the chest. Then I used a black Sharpie pen to make the screw bolts down the sides.

The lid was another matter and took me three attempts to get it right. In the end I found the best way that worked for me was to cut a long strip of black card to the same width as the chest and lined one side of it with more strips of kraft cardstock but let them overhang each side by 2-3 inches. Once I had covered enough of it so that when I curled the covered part of the black cardstock into an arch it would make a good shape at the right depth of the chest, I scored and folded the the overhanging kraft card down to make my sides which I fixed together on the inside with tape. This then made the arched lid ready for the base to be added. I then cut a another piece of black cardstock to make a flat base and fixed this to my lid.

To adhere the lid to the chest, I cut another strip of black card, about 3 inch wide and the length of the lid and scored along the middle, folded and fixed one half to the lid and then the other half to the inside of the back of the chest. I have to admit it felt like a lot of work at the time but trying to explain how I did it is actually much harder! I hope I am being relatively clear here, although I think if you actually try it you'll be able to see what I mean better. In fact you may well come up with a better way altogether!

The lid has some silver cardstock fixed around the edge as I did for the chest to make it look like metal and then out came my Sharpie pen again to add some detail.

I filled the chest with some chocolate coins and a little pirate puzzle game. I then made a small base for it to sit on out of chipboard which I covered with some sand coloured glittery cardstock. I found some clipart of a parrot, cut this out and fixed to the base. I laid two swords at the front and a couple of the pirate hats at the back (they are made of foam and are very light and pliable. I wrapped this all up with some florist cellophane and secured with black ribbon.