Picture a Day Cigar Box Purse

Every year I get one or sometimes, if I've been a particularly good girl, two day by day Elvis desktop calendars. The joy of this kind of calendar is I get to look at a new fantastic picture of a beautiful man every single day. Problem is I can't bear to part with the pictures once the day is done. Most people would rip the page off crumple it up and toss it in the recycle pile. Occasionally you see one tacked up somewhere that someone found particularly compelling. I have yet to see a picture of Elvis I don't find compelling in some way.

As you can imagine over the years I have amassed quite a pile of these calendar pages. Recently I decided I better do something with them besides thumb through and drool every once in a while. Keeping in my current crafting vein I got out my scissors, a cigar box, a Xyron machine with permanent adhesive and a razor knife and went to town.

First thing to do was to cut the pictures out. Luckily they were all framed in the same size block on the calendar. I trimmed inside the black line and soon had a huge stack ready to go.

Second step was to run them all through the Xyron machine. I have found that rubbing the back side rigorously with a bone folder is helpful in making sure you get full adhesion on your pieces and the edges come away clean. Luckily for me I have the largest machine, which allowed me to put two at time through. I ended up with a six-foot roll of black and white Elvis stickers. More than enough to cover one cigar box, however I discovered in the next step that I should have chosen the images a little more carefully based on how they would be placed on the box. You want to have some that are oriented to each side as well as some with top and bottom space. This will help with the overlapping and the placement around hinges and latches. You would hate to have to cut into his nose or chop off his pompadour to make it around a corner.