Hot Air Balloon Graduation Card Box

I hope you can stand a few more graduation posts.   Only a couple more, I promise  More than anything, I want to preserve the ideas here so when my son graduates in 4 years, I don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to his grad party.  Anyway, today I want to share with you the centerpiece of our gift table.  I fell in love with these hot air balloons at our local party store when I first saw them a year ago.  I knew immediately that I wanted a hot air balloon graduation card box for my daughter’s grad party.  The party store makes a lot of them for graduations, but they are also popular for weddings.

While the party store provides the large balloon and assembles everything, it is up to the customer to decorate the card box to their heart’s content.  I knew immediately I wanted to make it look like an actual hot air balloon, complete with paper weaving to make it look like the balloon’s basket.

So I started by taking 12″ x 12″ brown textured cardstock and cutting it into 1 inch strips.  I used one strip for the top horizontal piece and started attaching vertical strips alternating between attaching them on the front and back of the horizontal strip.  (The picture above is sideways, but you get the idea!)

With the framework completed, I started weaving strips in and out down the length of the vertical strips, going all the way to the bottom. I used my Hermafix adhesive squares to stick everything down.

I completed 4 of these woven sheets and attached them to the sides of the plain card box I bought at the party store.  To give a more finished look, I cut 4 more strips, folded them in half, and used a glue gun to affix them to the vertical edges of the card box.

While the scrapbooking adhesive worked well for holding the woven page together, I definitely would recommend a low temp glue gun for gluing the embellishments to the box.  The scrapbooking adhesive squares didn’t want to stay on the woven paper at all.

After I finished the sides,  I matted 4 pictures of my daughter on black cardstock and centered 1 on each of the sides of the graduation card box.

I then used my handy dandy Cricut to cut clouds to go along the bottom edges.  I discovered there was a cute cloud shape on the Everyday Paper Doll Cricut cartridge I already have.  I used my Songbird Cricut cartridge to cut out the letters.  Two of the sides read “Time for you to soar.”  The other two sides read “The sky’s the limit.”

For the top, I covered it in black and white patterned paper and cut out the slit for the cards.  I cut out letters spelling out “Congrats” in the school colors.  I also cut out a grad cap and diploma from the Recess Cricut Cartridge.

After I finished the box, I dropped it back at the party store so they could assemble it for me.  When we picked it up from the store before the party, I was thrilled to discover that my hot air balloon graduation card box had won this year’s decorating contest.  It made my day!

I am sharing this Graduation Card Box post with all the great link parties listed here.

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