Exploding Magic Box

For my very dear friend Kristin, an exploding box! All she wanted for her big day was a card, sorry I didn't manage that Kristin, you're getting this instead. Hope you're not too disappointed sweetie? ;) Oh, and I should warn you all that this is another long post. I seem to be drawn to the bigger projects these days. Bear with me. :)
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I've totally ripped off this idea from the amazing Magic Boxes blog by Elaine. Take a look, her creations are fantastic! She's written a tutorial on the basic construction of a small exploding box, but I just followed it loosely, using measurements I calculated on my own. My box is larger, it covers an entire piece of scrapbooking cardstock and measures 8,5x8,5 cm at its base, 11cm in height (plus lid). These colours aren't usually my first choice, but I find myself drawn to warm, yellow-orange colours these days... Breaking the winter blues I suppose! :)
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Making the flowers was the most time consuming part of it all. Every flower is made from two punched-out Retro flowers sprayed with Glimmermist (Sunflower, Green Meadow, Tiger Lily), inked, curled, detailed with Stickles Star Dust and glued together, finished off with a stamen made from a cut, sprayed, glued, glittered, rolled-up paper strip. The whole thing is then mounted on springy acetate strips. Complicated? Well, yes. That's a lot of steps to complete, and counting in the drying time of all the Glimmermist and glue and the sheer number of flowers required, it all adds up to quite a task. But the result was good, and that's the important thing! :) :)

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Elaine has just written a tutorial on how she makes her butterflies! It's very detailed and I used the same principles, but with different materials that had the right colours. My butterfly stamp has quite large black areas, so I was generous with the glitter, gems and Stickles to compensate. I chose to cut off the stamped antennae and replace them with antennae made from two slivers cut from folded black paper (again, a trick I found on Elaine's blog). Much stronger than the originals! I covered them (and the butterfly body) with Glossy Accents as a reinforcement.

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The full effect of the exploding box cannot be demonstrated in pictures, so I made this super short video for you! Since this is my first attempt at this kind of project, there are things I'd like to change, things you just have to try out because no written tutorial can cover it. How flexible is your acetate for example? I'd like to have gotten some more movement out of the shorter acetate stems and could have made them much thinner. In fact, I've carefully trimmed the shorter ones with a craft knife - with my heart in my throat fearing the knife would slip and cut me (or worse - the project!). You never know these little details until you try it and see for yourself. Now I know, for next time.
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Every bit of this box is hand made by yours truly. The panels are made from a pattern paper with a very subtle yellow organic pattern stamped with this great stamp and heat embossed in green. The Glimmermist has been put to good use again, the same three colours as used on the flowers. This paper was then mounted on a shimmering green pattern paper and the whole thing glued to thin cardboard for weight. The ugly sides were covered with silver heat embossing.

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When I made the lid for this box I decided to try and get an illusion of the side panels continuing up onto the lid, unbroken. I didn't quite manage to match the colour intensity of the lid to the top of the side panels, but it's not too bad. On the inside of the box, the same panels appear, but this time on a pattern paper with a more visible design.
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Elaine is very generous in sharing her techniques. In this post she explains how to make the stamens I've made here. This flower is made with the biggest Retro punch - for reference, the lid measures almost 9x9 cm. On the inside of the lid I've put another mat like this one with a little greeting for Kristin.

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I hope you've enjoyed this project! I certainly enjoyed making this box, and although it was a lot of work I'd really like to make more. Thanks Elaine, for the great idea! :)