Personalised Choccie Boxes

When I opened the choccies my hubby gave me for Valentine’s, there was a leaflet inside saying that Thornton’s are now doing personalised boxes. You can upload your own photo and they will put it on the lid of the box, and you can choose a message to go on the side, and you can even choose which choccies they put in!

What a gift for digital scrapbookers! There is a limit to the size of the file you can upload, but they don’t tell you the measurements. I measured the little window on their web page and the proportions are 3:2, so I’ve designed a layout 9 in x 6 in to comply with those proportions, which I am going to have done for my hubby for our Silver Wedding Anniversary in May. (I just wish I didn’t have to wait that long before I get it done!)

I did this using Serif CraftArtist, which has a marvellous tool for extracting images from backgrounds. I spoke to the man from Serif on the phone the other day, and told him how much easier this tool is to use than the one on their PhotoPlus photo editing software, and he said that they are going to put it in the new version, which is good.

I also used the transparency tool to fade the main image, and the text, into the background.

One thing I really like about Serif software is that once you’ve got used to one program, the others are really easy to learn, because they tend to keep the interface the same, and many of the tools become familiar.

The picture shows Beatrice with my hubby. After lunch she always comes up asking for Dreamies, which are kitty snacks. These are the kitty equivalent of crack cocaine. Both our kitties adore them! Beatrice has a special relationship with my hubby and I have to prise her off him if I want to get anywhere near! In the small picture in the frame, you can see our two girlies together, with Phoebe at the top.

I can think of several other people I would like to get these personalised choccie boxes for. They do a range of prices depending on how big a box you choose – you can have more than one layer of choccies. I think it’s such a lovely idea!