Foxy boxy - Chinese twist boxes

 Well, following our recent class in the village, teaching people how to make Chinese twist boxes and popping them on cards, I thought I would post a few of mine, showing the variety from one simple form.

The box on the first card was made from old music from a charity shop, decorated using a paste paper technique. After folding the diagonals to get the twist in the right place and before I glued it together, I sheared about 1cm off the top of the box with pinking shears, to show the contrast of the back and front of the paper.

The box on the second card was made with scanned Woman's Weekly corset ads from the Sixties. I put ribbons and buttons in the box.

 The three pictures above show a card containing two twist boxes sitting on top of a lower, flatter box (which I didn't manage to get a good photo of). I stencilled the cover using the shape left after I had cut out the petals that I stuck on the twist boxes.

The card immediately below was bit of freehand painting of flowers, using Analinky dye paints and a few 'gems' stuck on. I put some sweet pea seeds in the twist box and it has already gone off into the ether as a birthday card.

The box on the bottom card was made of recycled wrapping paper and I cut bits out of the same paper to create the border. Nothing particularly clever.

These are so simple to do. Thanks again to Ruth Smith, who has done so much work developing the original Chinese thread booklet techniques into something that a mere mortal can manage!