Happy 21st Birthday Youngest Girly Girl !

This is the 3x3 box I made for youngest girly girl's birthday.  The box is simple to make but you need a pretty strong adhesive to keep it together nice and tight.  The tape runner I used didn't fare so well in the Kansas heat and humidity but it worked out OK.  I went with a star theme as youngest girly girl is a big fan of them.

This is a close up of the bow I made.  I used the same star paper that is on the sides of the box to make it.  I wanted a bow slightly smaller than the box so I cut 8 strips of 1/4 inch paper 5 3/4 inches long.  I cut 6 strips 5 1/2 inches in length by 1/4 inch wide.  You then fold one of the strips of paper in half to find the center and I used my mini hole punch to punch a hole in the center.  Do this with each of the paper strips.  I found I could actually punch about 4 strips at a time so it's not such a tedious task.  Once the center hole is punched I then punch a hole on each end of the paper strips about 1/4 inch in.  The center of the bow is a brad.  Once you are done with all your punching, put the brad through the center hole of the six 5 1/2 inch long strips of paper.  Then fold these strips over and feed the brad through the holes on the right side of these strips.  Next feed the brad through the holes you punched on the left side of the paper strips.  Repeat the process with 5 3/4 inch paper strips.  Once you have all the strips onto the brad - close the brad.  Don't close it too tightly.  Separate the strips, starting with the longest strips on the bottom first.  Shape your bow.  It probably sounds like a lot of trouble but it's much simpler to do than it sounds in the instructions.  You can even simplify it more by cutting your strips wider.  This way you won't need to cut as many strips and you won't have so many to separate to form the bow.  I attached the bow using a pop dot.  It's nice and sticky and holds onto the bottom of the brad well.

This is the card I made to go along with the box.  I used a couple of different Verve Stamp sets.  The swirl in the background is from the Hearts On Fire set.  It has a heart in the center so I just masked it off because it would have shown through on the star.  I stamped it on white cardstock in a chocolate brown ink.  You can't see it well in this picture but there are small dimensional pearls on the swirls.  The star is from the Swirly Stars set.  It's the largest star in the set.  I stamped it on pink paper using the same brown ink I used for the swirl.  I cut it out and attached it using dimensional pop dots to raise it off the paper a bit.  The sentiment is also from the Swirly Stars set.