Tie Shaped Gift Box Using Balsa Wood Paper

12x12 Cardstock is the king of specialty cardstock. We love to scour paper mills across the world to bring you the coolest papers we can find. A specialty paper like foil cardstock, glitter cardstock, or holographic cardstock can turn your paper craft projects from good to great! 

Today Design Team Member Monica is here to inspire us with a project using our Wood Paper. This is real wood layered onto a paper backing, so you can use it just like paper - die cut it, layer it, and more. 

Monica used our Wood Paper to make this cool tie shaped box, a fun Father's Day DIY project that can be filled with candy and a gift card. 

Supplies:

• Medium Brown Balsa Wood Paper
• Mirri H Gold Foil Cardstock
• American Crafts Textured Cardstock in Chestnut
• Bearly Art Liquid Adhesive
• Tie Shaped Box Cut Files found in Cricut Design Space here

Assembly on this tie box is pretty straight forward, as you just glue the tabs together to form the box, but with this stiffer paper it is important to use a good liquid adhesive. We love Bearly Arts Liquid Adhesive for projects like this.

How to Cut Balsa Wood Paper 

What we wanted to talk about today, is how to determine cut settings on a new type of cardstock. Specialty cardstock is typically a bit more expensive than regular cardstock, so it's especially painful when you hit cut and ruin an entire piece of paper.

To combat this, start out by test cutting small squares in the corner of your cardstock. Use your best guess at cut settings (Cricut and Silhouette both provide good starting points within their cut settings), then test cut and tweak settings, then test cut again. Repeat this process cutting very small squares, until you find the right settings, and then you are ready to cut your larger pieces. 

What Cricut Settings to Use for Wood Paper 

After trying a few settings, Monica found the perfect cut setting for Balsa Wood Paper on Cricut. Choose Heavy Cardstock Setting and then bump the pressure up to More.

Have you tried our wood cardstock paper?  There are so many projects this would be perfect for.

-Monica

Here's another cool idea using wood paper!