Linking Up At SILVER MESS: Boxed In

Today, I am linking up at SILVER MESS.  Rachel's prompt (is that what you call it?)(and by the way it's here) is "boxed in."  I was trying to come up with something along those lines, but was having a fair bit of trouble.  WHEN - it hit me!  I am boxed in by clutter!

That's how this post was going to begin, but now Rachel is not doing the link-up because she has other things to attend to, and that is completely understandable!  However, I had this post almost all ready to publish, so I'm not just going to delete it, or even change it to a non-link-up post, because then you wouldn't have the opportunity to check out Rachel's blog!  That would be a shame, wouldn't it?  So I'm just going to proceed as if she is still doing a link-up.  Go!

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My desk is cluttered.  Beside my bed is cluttered.  My inbox is cluttered.  My brain is cluttered.

So today* I'm going to make a card inspired by clutter, or rather, the absence of clutter, since I can't in good conscience make a card inspired by clutter.  The idea sort of makes my brain hurt.  And of course, since the prompt is "boxed in," I have to include a cute little box in the design.

*let's be honest here.  I didn't make this card today.  I made it on Thursday, but I'm posting on it now.

Because this card is inspired by the absence of clutter, I definitely wanted to make sure this card stayed super simple and had a lot of white space.

I knew I wanted to include a box, so I got out my nice brown paper, and lightly sketched an open box.

 When I got it the way I liked, I outlined it with black sharpie.  I used a brand new sharpie (meaning, this is the first time I've used it, even though I got it months ago), which is why the lines are so thick.

After I outlined the box, I cut it out.

Observe: these are two different types of pens here.  The toppest is a black sharpie pen, which I used to outline the box, and the other, a really nice pen that I love which came from my neighbor's car (no, I did not steal it.  He let me have it).  It writes really nicely, and the stroke is nice and thin - the way I like it!  It does not have any indication anywhere on it though, that tells what the brand is or anything, so I guess I need to keep it extra safe so I can keep it foreveeer.

I have a few graph paper scraps on my desk, so I practiced writing the sentiment on one of those before finally getting it right.  Fun fact: I didn't know I was only practicing when I tried the first two times.  I thought I was going to get it perfect the first time, but no.  I didn't.  Oh well.  It happens.

The last time, when I at last became victorious, I decided to use the thin-stroke pen for the bottom part of he sentiment, and I'm happy to say it worked splendidly!  Before, I had used my sharpie for the top and bottom, but didn't like the thick lines that the sharpie made.  So I switched it out for the other, and this is what happened!
Now, for this last easy peasy step, gluing the sentiment and box to the card, I used my sticker maker instead of liquid glue, because liquid glue would make the paper warp, which I did not want.  It worked well for the graph paper, but for some reason the sticky stuff didn't adhere to the brown paper as well, though it wasn't too bad (I did end up using a teeny bit of glue on the section that the sticky stuff came off of).  Just something to keep in mind if you try it.







This is actually sort of a strange card...like, why would I send this to someone?  But I will, and I shall explain!

Do you find it ironic that perhaps boxed in is my style?  No, I certainly hope it's not.  It shouldn't be!  Creativity is about breaking those barriers, and that is what I aim to do!

How are YOU boxed in?  What do you do to break out of that box?  Do you think my card depicts well what it's like to break out of the box?

P.S.  Don't forget to stop by Rachel's duper cool blog and leave her a nice comment!