It must have been fate

When you "have your finger in too many pies", there comes a time when you really have to sit yourself down and give yourself a good talking to. There are just so many hours in a day and when you start avoiding things like sleeping, eating and carrying on normal conversations with your other half, it's time to realize that not EVERY challenge to tat something new and interesting has to result in a finished project. So when the Fringe Element, tatting exchange for something from The Place I Call Home I reluctantly realized that I just didn't have the time. Then there was an online challenge to make a set of earrings and pendant and again I closed down the web site and kept plodding along with the "jobs I had to do". I even resisted IsDihara's challenge to decorate your chocolate box with tatting, or I sort of resisted, until this happened.

I was pulling some coin rollers out of the top shelf of the closet and this fell on my head. I couldn't manage a full size box, but what harm would it do to make a little something for such a tiny box? So first I covered it in pink paper.

I had visions of doing something Victorian in deep red and yellow, but was prevented by my lack of yellow thread. I have some yellow, but not the deep dark yellow-y gold colour I was imagining. For that matter I didn't have the dark red in my pallet either. So knowing that I really didn't have enough spare time to play with possibilities I turned to the boxes contents and thought I might see if I could make some lace chocolates for my box. That's when I realized that brown is another colour I don't have. I turned to my embroidery threads, but splitting skeins of thread wasn't something I wanted to do for any but the tiniest of projects. So I almost gave up until I remembered that I had been given a mixed bag of size 10 crochet cotton which happened to include a ball of brown. A little brown cloth and a little bit of tatting and I had the contents taken care of.

Then I turned my attention back to the box. With the box covered in pink I had effectively cut down some of my options and since I didn't have a lot of ideas percolating in my head, I settled for plain old white since it would let me keep my other options open. I made a simple ring and chain band to go around the side, but it looked skimpy. So I turned my attention to the top and began to cover the lid with more ring and chain tatting adjusting for the corners. It wasn't too long before I realized that I might end up with something weird happening in the middle, so I switched to doing rows of split rings.

That gave me a very uninspired box covered in plain white lace. It needed something to finish off the outer edge so I added a border of gold chain which finished the edge nicely and then I though a matching gold ribbon would be just the thing the box needed. One band of gold looked off balance so I tatted a second to cross in the other direction. That gave me a plain white box with a gold ribbon, but that wasn't really what I had been imagining so I took a look online at Victorian chocolate boxes and when I saw the flowers I knew what I needed to do.

Delicate violets with yellow gold beads in the centres. A single leaf and matching stem and I had the topping that my little box needed. I removed it from the box so that you can see it better here, although neither shot shows the gold edge along the bottom.

At least this was one challenge I didn't have to forgo entirely, but now that it's done I need to hurry up and get my Christmas card tatting done. I know my hubby, the first Christmas card he gets, he'll be wanting to send out ours. My niece has a habit of sending hers out in November, so we have this ongoing battle about when is the right time to send cards. I'd rather it were later to give me more tatting time. He'd rather it were sooner so that they don't arrive late. I'm off to tat snowflakes.

One more picture to show you a view of the gold border along the edge.