Altered Cigar Box - for a Jam Maker

When visiting hubby's niece recently she very kindly gave us a

 jar of home made jam - and very yummy it is too!

A couple of days later I happened upon some little packets containing

 'transparent jam pot covers' in a charity shop - what a co-incidence!

  This gave me an idea of putting together a little box full of jam making accessories.

I remembered I had an old cigar box in my craft cupboard

just waiting for the perfect project!

I searched Flickr for some appropriate images I could use and 

found these -

                            

I painted the box with cream acrylic.  Found some similiarly coloured

K & Co scrapbook paper, cut it to size and machine stitched around

the edge and also stitched the 'J' image on before sticking it

onto the box with Liquitex matte medium.

I added a rosette made up of vintage doilies and a gingham scrap,

some ribbon and a strip of Martha Stewart border punch

to resemble a crisp white linen tablecloth.

I also added the scrabble letters to spell out the name of the recipient and this idea I shamelessly copied from Jan of Jan's Arty Journey

who makes the most amazing collages.

Want to see the inside?

I used two of the same images again as well as the Jell-O one

and some rubber stamping from the 'Play Time - Set 1' by Toodles and Binks.

Here's the contents

Five packets from the charity shop, some assorted fabric circles

I cut with pinking shears and some ribbon to tie around the top

of the jam jars.

Here it is all neatly packed into the box and it's topped off with

a really old booklet I purchased from the internet called

 'Why jams and jellies taste fresher when made the Certo way'

by Mrs Handy-Pandy and it contains hints on jam making

(not that Sue needs them of course!) and loads of recipes too.

I don't know how useful any of this will actually be,

but I had a lot of fun putting it all together.

I'll just have to pass it onto Father Christmas now for his safe keeping

until 25th December!

Thanks for looking :)