craft show!

Hey friends! I am participating in my first craft show this month! It's scheduled for November 12th at the Sycamore Mall here in Iowa City. Many thanks to my friend Melissa Eaton with whom I am sharing a booth and thus the whole craft-filled day. (See flyer below for more information and graphically challenged but well-intentioned excitement.) If you're in the area you should come and say hi!

I'm pretty excited. I've been working the past little while to increase my inventory and I came up with a few fun new items that may or may not make it out to the booth and/or onto the Etsy.

One of them is these pencil boxes I've made out of cereal boxes:

I was originally inspired by a tutorial I found online, but that version used hot glue (which I don't like to use for serious crafting) and I found that because I didn't use a Life cereal box my folding ratios were a bit off, so I had to improvise. I've made a few different variations and I'd like your expert, blog-reader advice about which I should run with. Here they are:

First off, I tried a few different closing techniques:

There's the paper button closure...

The classic cereal box closure...

The tab closure (partially open so you can see it's inner workings...)

...and the tab closure all closed up.

I also tried a few different things with the insides, too:

There's this one with a drop-spine.
The back flaps are linked in front of the top piece and the top and back piece drop down when the box is opened.

And this one where the back flaps are attached behind the top instead of in front of it.

I think my favorites are the classic cereal box closure and the second inside option because I think they play well on the fact that the box is in fact made out of a cereal box.

What are your thoughts? Which style do you prefer? Does the natural wear on the cereal box bother you or do you think it adds to their charm?