Saturday, 20 February 2010

B is for.......

We are continuing on with the Alphabet swap on CCSwaps so this month we make something starting with the letter B, for theme, technique or medium.

I came across a blog with some beautiful exploding boxes on it (http://magic-boxes.blogspot.com/) and the lady was kind enough to provide a tutorial on how to make them. I thought I would give it a try and use butterflies as my theme.

The only problem is that the measurements are in millimeters and I am still not too great at the conversion from metric to inches!! I did fine with making the box but wasted quite a few pieces of cardstock getting the lid to the right size. My boxes certainly need more practice but I am happy with my first attempts. The first one I tried was my "protoype" for the technique. I used light weight blue card stock for the box and the lid and 130Lb for the inserts. I got a bit heavy handed when scoring and ripped a bit on one of the sides but left it as I knew I would be keeping it.

I stamped a leaf stamp (Magenta) and added some little die-cut flowers. The butterflies (Stampendous)  were stamped in black pigment ink and embossing powder and coloured yellow and green then added some glitter.


The next box: I stamped the butterflies on both sides using  Christmas Night glitter embossing powder and coloured them with markers and glittered the top with some Stickles. I stamped a leafy scroll on the side and bottom pieces after doing direct-to-paper with pigment inks and added some "jewels". I then cut slits in the bottom insert and attached the butteflies with pieces of acetate, and glued a butterfly to the lid.

The picture of the lid is fine (oops! I think the edge piece was a bit loose-will fix that!)  but the others are not the clearest as of course I had to take pictures of them with my camera and I am not that familiar with our camera since I don't take a lot of pictures. The colours are more intense in real life.

3 comments:

Nancy said...

Woo hoo...great job on those boxes! Beautiful!

KAT said...

Love those butterflies - they look real just flying there!

Carol said...

Fabulous,love how the butterflies seem to fly out of the box.