Fun with Collage Cubes!

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Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! Today, I'm going to be showing you a project that I have been sitting on for a few weeks. It was a gift for my sister, so I couldn't just go around putting it online. That would spoil the fun! Now that I have some time and the holidays are winding down, it's the perfect time to show it off!

The collage cubes are pretty darn versatile, but I decided to make mine into a perpetual calendar. You've gotta love a calendar that never goes out of date and is customized just for you, right? Of course! Here is how the calendar looked when my sister unwrapped it on Christmas morning, but don't forget that there are other sides and photos. I'll show you more photos as this post goes on!

 

I took that photo of my sister and her lovely family when we went to St Charles Christmas Traditions recently. With her little ones, it can be hard to get a photo of all of them together. She probably thought it was suspicious that day, because I insisted they get a photo taken in front of the big tree :)

 

What you need:

• My Creations Collage Cubes
• Prints of your chosen photos
• Cardstock/scrapbook paper
• Ink of choice
• Stamps of choice
• Embellishments of choice
• Stamps or cutouts for your numbers and months. Ctmh sells alphabets and we have a few other stamp sets that could be useful for this project as well. I used some non Ctmh stamps for the sayings on this project. Don't be afraid to mix and match your on hand stamps too!
• Adhesive
• sponge piece for inking edges (optional)
• Paper trimmer

Scissors

 

 

Let's get to crafting!

 

1. 
   Using your ink pad and a piece of sponge, ink the edges of your cubes. This is optional, but the inking of edges really helps them to "pop" and gives them a cool finished look (in my opinion). I used ctmh chocolate, which is my go-to ink color.
2. Next, cut 12 2x2 squares. I chose 3 medium/light colored solid papers, as these will be the pieces that you stamp your month names on, so you want to make sure the paper colors are not too dark to see your stamping! If you have room left over, feel free to use other stamps to embellish or even flat stickers. You want to make sure whatever decorations you use on the cubes do not pop up too much, as you want the cubes to sit flat in the tray
3. I then stamped all the months on my paper squares using ctmh's stamp of the month set for November, which ended up being so helpful in this project.
4. I used a corner punch on all corners of the month squares
5.    I inked all the edges of these squares.
6. 
   I then cut 12 additional 2x2 squares from 3 different coordinating patterned cardstock papers.  (4 squares of each pattern. For this project, I used paper from the Avonlea set.
7. 
   I inked all edges of these squares . Just look at how much difference inking the edges makes! 

 

8: I adhered the month squares to the patterned paper squares

9: Next, I adhered these assembled month squares to the blocks.

 

 I adhered 4 months to three different blocks, which gave me two blank squares per block.

10: Cut out an additional 6 2x2 squares in coordinating paper. These are the "sayings" blocks for your calendar. Decorate these however you like, just make sure they lay flat. I used quotes from a TPS stamp set I bought over a year ago at JoAnn's Fabrics

11: Adhere these squares to the blank squares on you month cubes.

12: Cut 12 solid light colored squares in 2x2 for your number squares and ink all the edges

13: stamp your numbers. You will need 0,1,2,3,4,5 for one block and 0,1,2,6,7,8 for another block. You don't need a 9 because you can flip the 6 to make a 9. Cool, huh?

14. Once the number squares are done, affix them in the manner described above.

15: that leaves you with 4 empty cubes with a total of 24 blank panels for photos! You can do 6 complete photos divided among two blocks or even 24 individual little photos. For this project, I used 4 "big photos" (I will show in the photos at the end of this post. 4 photos that spanned 4 squares each = 16 squares.)

16: that left me with 8 blank squares which I used for single/small photos!

 

Here are the large photos I used for this calendar. These photos just show a few ways these can be rearranged. They are so fun to play around with, although in my opinion making the project itself is a little time consuming. However, the results are worth it.

 

showing some of the single/small photos

showing some more of the single/small photos.

 

These collage cubes are really fun. You don't have to make a calendar out of them. You could just blow up one photo to 6x6 and cover all the blocks with it, then use other photos, sayings or papers for the other sides. This is a versatile product. When it comes direct from ctmh, it looks like this.

All assembled and ready for your creativity! Order your own set here. A final note on this item. I did cover the tray with paper and ink the top (white) edges. I cut a piece of paper at 8.5x8.5. I scored the paper at 1.5 and 7, turned it 90 degrees and scored again at 1.5in and 7 inches before adhering and covering the tray,

What do you think? Would you have liked to receive something like this as a gift? Also, don't forget that we are still running the Whoo's your valentine promotion.   Simply spend 35$ on Close to My Heart products via my website and you can purchase the Who's your valentine set for only 10$ (it retails for 40$). The set includes:

12 die-cut boxes,3 cardstock sheets, 1 sheet of silver glitter paper, 12 treat tubes, and an exclusive D-size stamp set created specifically for the kit!

While these are good for a classroom party, you can also use it to give as small gifts to anyone you care for and it's a great deal. You can even double down on your deal when you spend 50$ in product, you can add the Stamp of the Month for only 5 dollars more. The Who's your Valentine Promotion is valid through 1/31/13 and only one 10$ kit is permitted per customer so get yours today.

Until next time, happy crafting!