I was so relived it went well! And today I went out on a nice walk in the local area past the Yattendon estate where looooaaads of Christmas trees are grown.

So, on to Christmas gift boxes. These are simple to make as I’m using the Xcut Christmas Tree Box die to cut out all the templates and then it’s just a case of folding, sticking and decorating! I have made gift boxes from scratch a few times but I like using the die because it saves so much time and gives neat and tidy results.

I made two templates for the sides of the box so I could draw round them each time to get the right size for the panels. I didn’t add much extra decoration to these, just a simple bit of red and white Christmas twine round the centre of each box, tied in a bow.

I often take a little stack of templates with me to craft fairs as the boxes are easy to make up when my stand is quiet. Sometimes I use tacky glue to attach the tabs and sometimes I use double sided tape – there are advantages to both. You don’t have to sit and hold tape til it dries like you do for glue, but you do have to place it correctly first time as there’s no wiggle room once you’ve stuck it!

These boxes are a really good size for chocolate coins or other little treats, or if you wanted to you could make loads of them and have an advent calendar! I might do that if I’m really bored one Christmas.