Pinch, Punch...

...first of the month.

Do you remember meeting up with your friends on the way to school on the first day of a new month and chanting that followed by "No returns", before they had a chance to say it to you?

The response from them would be "A punch and a kick for being so quick" or something similar.

I've often wondered where this came from and found this on the web: "Pinch punch first of the month and no returns." This is accompanied by the person's pinching and punching the victim. It seems to have originated in the days when people believed in witches. Just as we throw a pinch of salt over our shoulder when we have spilt some, even today, some people claim that the 'pinch' element refers to a pinch of salt. In this instance, the pinch of salt was believed to weaken the witch's powers and the follow-up punch was to drive her away. The 'and no returns' element was supposed to prevent the victim responding by saying: "A kick and a flick for being so quick!" These words would also be accompanied by the appropriate actions if the first person failed to add the extra words!

So here we are on the 1st February.

January flew by with a serious lack of paper crafting so I thought I should put that right this month and have started off with making a start on another piece of storage.

As it was members weekend this weekend, I took advantage of my 30% discount and bought this...

 ...I bought the advent storage (Tivoli) at the last members weekend before Christmas but it was too close to the start of December to make a start on it and I didn't want to rush it and spoil the thing.

These storage kits come flat-packed with the glue needed to put them together and there are a variety of 'add-ons' that you can buy...dies to cut fancy panels for the drawer fronts, paints, papers, waxes, sealants and fancy handles. Or you can raid your own stash to decorate them how you wish.

The Verona has two different sizes of drawers and they can be arranged as the photo above shows or with the same size drawers directly above each other rather than staggered. The drawers come as flat pieces of grey-board, ready scored. All you have to do is fold up the sides and glue together...

...the packaging has even been designed so that you can slot a large and a small drawer into it so they are held firm & straight whilst drying. This worked fine for the larger drawer but the smaller ones just dropped straight through - I think my packaging was cut incorrectly but hey-ho, no big problem and the drawers were quickly assembled and ready for a coat of paint.

The top and bottom sections of the cabinet are constructed individually and are attached to the main body of the box later...

 ...this is great for painting purposes as the pieces are of a more manageable size to handle whilst slapping on the paint. I am going with white acrylic Chalk paint for my piece.

As most of the box gets covered, I'm still debating whether I need to give it a second coat. Especially as I will be using distress ink and gilding wax on the bits that show...still thinking about that.

I have decided to cover my box using the following PPs...

 ...unfortunately, I only have the 6x6 and 8x8 stacks so will need to do a bit of strategic paper piecing on the body of the box (I still can't think why I didn't get the 12x12 pad in this - oh well).

The kit comes with pre-cut grey-board panels to decorate and then attach to the box/drawers...

...this makes it very easy to cover the drawer fronts neatly (if you don't want to go to the extra expense of the die set) and the box panels cover the construction slots so you have a lovely smooth finish.

There is still a fair bit of painting to do so I'll show you more when that is done.

Happy first of the month........................................................................