Sweetest Christmas - a box frame diorama

Christmas is such a wonderful time of year filled with love and joy. Today I am sharing with you a reverse box frame project using the Sweetest Christmas collection by Mintay Papers. The pinks in this collection may not be a traditional Christmas colour palette but the sentiment behind the collection is totally right for this time of year when sweet treats aplenty fill our cupboards and the children's Christmas Stockings.

To start this project I chose a window frame by. The frame was covered with white gesso and then a layer of copperwax brushed over the top. The frame was then adhered to a piece of paper from the paper pack. Once the paper was glued in place I used a craft knife to trim it up to the edges of the frame.

The box frame was lined using paper from the same collection and a layer of lace added along the top border - My frame was more than 12" tall but the gap has been hidden by cutting a strip of drawers from the paper pack and adding these top and bottom (as shown) and the side pieces covered with contrasting pink paper. Three pieces from the topper sheet were cut out and added to the left side of the back ground before the frame was tucked into place using large pieces of cardboard to lift it forward.

The papers are perfect for fussy cutting elements - these were cut from the back of the front paper of the pack with additional elements cut from the topper sheet page. The fussy cut elements were shaped using a bone folder and ball tools to give them depth and adhered to the bottom of the piece.

To frame the top of the piece I used a long garland of Santas socks adding fussy cut Santa faces to the ends and some red and white "peppermints" also cut from the paper pack to further embellish.

I felt that the central frame still looked a little bare and added my title by layering a frosty moments chipboard frame with fussy cut elements and some pieces of ivy leaves from the set wandering ivy decors. Additional pieces of the ivy  were tucked into the embellishments at the bottom of the frame.

I used