Cooking with Quickutz Dies

I once attended a function where these very talented chefs were required to compete in the cetegory of innovative plate presentation. I was amazed at the talent of one chef who did amazing work with filo pastry and square egg roll dough. As I was watching him, I got a WOW moment. Why not create the same type of flourish for a plate by using quickutz dies. I went home and experimented with egg rool dough. I put a piece of egg roll dough between two pieces of parchment paper and laid this sandwich on the flower die cut. Eureka, it worked. I fried the flower in a bit of oil and Voila! Flouishes for a plate.

Before and after sample of boxes

Here is a phot of the unfinished box and below is the sample I did. I normally decorate the knob but left like this so you can see the resemblance to the unfinished one.

Here are a few ideas to put in the boxes. I add tags, small cards, a variety of teas, for my friends fill them with a spice mixture I make at home. What ever tickles your fancy or what every will fit into the boxes.

Decorative Boxes from a Dollaramam Find

Here is a collection of boxes I decorated from a visit to chain of stores in Canada called Dollarama. These boxes were too cute to be left alone. I took them home and decided to find a way to decorate them using cardstock and embelishments. After an number of trials and errors I discovered the best way to cover them was to take a sample of each box, take it apart and make a template. With the template I laid it on my cardstock, traced and cut it out. I move on to the box I wanted to cover. Each box comes with a wooden knob that is screwed onto the front of the box. I removed the knob and put it aside. THen I adhered double sided tape to the sides of the boxes, to the top and to the bottom. I covered the box, sanded all sides to remove excess paper, adhered double sided tap to the sides again to add ribbon. Before I screwed back the knob I decorated it, added an emblishment for some and then screwed it back on.