Friday Focus: The Urban Collection

Hi All! Welcome to another Friday Focus. Today we're featuring Close To My Heart's Urban Collection. This collection is fantastic for guys, but really can be used for anyone. It has that edgy urban grunge feel with a lot of visual textures like corrugated and embossed metals, weathered woodgrains, and paint stained plaster. Very cool!

So for today's project, I decided to share a little handmade kindness with my urban-born teens. As they've been helping themselves to my M&Ms stash of late, I decided to embrace it (for the moment) and make them each a little treat box. Let's take a look:

This project was completely inspired by Sam Donaldson at Pootles Papercraft in the UK. I used her exact dimensions and just changed up the closure (I liked the clothespin with this paper). The box on the left is for my daughter and the one on the right is for my son. As you can see, the Urban papers pair beautifully with Kraft cardstock. To give you a little perspective on the size, the sentiment is stamped on a 3/4-inch circle of Colonial White cardstock. The largest circle is 1 1/4 inches. (This is a small box! But I did fit in the contents of 2 fun-sized M&Ms packs in each...) The sentiment is from the Mini Messages Hostess Rewards stamp set. (This fun set comes with 25 different mini messages with icons and can be yours for $10 when you host a Close To My Heart gathering.)

Here are some close-ups:

For my son's box, I stamped the heart in Sapphire ink and the words in Slate. I inked around the edges of each circle in Sapphire and popped them all up with dimensional adhesive.

For my daughter's box, I stamped the heart in Eggplant ink and the words in Peacock. I then inked around the edges of each layer with Saffron ink to make them stand out a little more. I also added a scalloped circle under the sentiment to make it look a little more like a flower. I popped up each layer with dimensional adhesive.

Finally, I added some twine from my stash to the mini clothespins (also from my stash) with Liquid Glass.

And now one more look:

I hope you enjoyed the mini treat boxes. I know my kids did! Now, for more Urban inspiration, hop on over to From My Bungalow and see what the incredibly talented Lynn Darda has for you.

Have a wonderfully creative day!