Explosion box with Uptown Flair design paper

Here’s my second explosion box, decked in the gorgeous summer colors of The Paper Studio’s Uptown Flair design paper. Not only is an explosion box a great alternative for your usual birthday card or gift, it is also kind of a mini album since it will actually hold about 20 pictures!

I had so much fun creating my first explosion box, in the blue jeans colors of the Fiddlesticks paper pad, so I was very happy when I was commissioned to create a second one.

Uptown Flair’s color theme is so inspiring! Almost every sheet of its 12×12 inch paper stack has glitter in its design, which gives it a truly glamorous and festive look and feel. I had already used it on some other projects – two birthday cards, one a mini wallet and the other a photo wallet – but when you make an explosion box you really have to use each and every sheet of paper; which automatically means you get to enjoy working with each individual design.

Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think. If you’d like to create one yourself, please check out the tutorial in my Etsy shop. Oh, and for the link to the “Print your tags” (free) tutorial I refer to in the video, click here.

Click here if you can’t see the video.

 

Klik hier als je het filmpje niet kunt zien.

Dit explosiedoosje is een leuk alternatief voor een verjaardagskaart of zelfs een minialbum – er kunnen nl. ongeveer 20 foto’s in!

Ter inspiratie om zelf ook te maken – er is een Engelstalige werkinstructie beschikbaar in mijn Etsy shop. Ik kan ook een Nederlandse versie voor je maken, tegen dezelfde prijs. Geen tijd/zin om zelf te maken? Je kunt er ook eentje bestellen op dit blog, via de Showroom, papierkeuze/kleur/thema in overleg.

Prima Romance Novel Altered Treasure Chest, pt. 2 – Completed

Here’s the little treasure chest again (see part 1), the one I altered with paper from Prima, the Romance Novel 6×6 inch (15×15 cm) design paper pad.

The mini tags were an extra challenge, in that I wanted to print text on them instead of writing them by hand. How do you print text on teeny-tiny labels and tags? I can’t say everything went perfect from the start, can’t say there were no misprints either, but: in the end I was able to come up with some pretty awesome mini prints on some pretty tiny mini tags! 🙂 And if you’d like to learn how to do this as well, check out my free tutorial!

Of course there’s a video below, but first a quick reminder of what I started with: “Before”

And here’s “After”:

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I really like how it matches my colonial wooden cabinet so perfectly… Plus, I’m especially pleased with how the quilled dandelion turned out – thanks to a tutorial by Inna from Inna’s Creations.

As I mentioned in part 1, I made this box on commission for someone who is going to send it to his lady friend who lives far far away, across many oceans and seas. Of course I sincerely hope that the intended recipient, “R”, really loves this little treasure chest her friend commissioned for her!

So, on to the video! The first one is in English, the second in Dutch.

Click here if you don’t see the video.

 

Klik hier als je het filmpje hieronder niet kunt zien.

 

 

Safely arrived at its destination! 🙂

Prima Romance Novel altered treasure chest, pt. 1 – Preview / Work in progress

I’m working on a commissioned altered box at the moment, and I thought it would be fun to share some of the progress.

The person I’m making this for wants to send an altered box to his dear friend in New Zealand (yea, I’m being shipped overseas, woohoo! :-)). He has sent me some short notes he wants to be written on the box and furthermore he’s asked me to do something with a dandelion, or a dandelion theme, as this flower has special meaning to him and his friend.

Here’s what I came up with so far:

  1. I’m going to use the Romance Novel design paper stack, I don’t think there’s a paper out there that’s more fitting! It has everything you could want for a commission like this: it’s gorgeous, it’s romantic AND it has a love letter theme, including vintage postage stamps and the like! How cool is that for a gift that will actually be sent overseas by mail!
  2. I decided I wanted to find a way to create an actual paper dandelion, 3D, life size. Didn’t have a clue how to do it, but I was going to find out and make it work!

So, here’s some pics of the work in progress, enjoy!

The wooden box I’m altering. It’s kind of a mini treasure chest and it’s about 3.5×2.5×2.5 inches (9x6x6 cm). Isn’t it adorable?

First I removed its lock and the hinges on the back. Then I painted it dark brown except its little legs which I painted gold, using simple acryllic paint. I mixed it with a pearl paint to create a pearly shine. Then I sprayed glimmer mist on the whole thing, using Tattered Angel’s Iridescent Gold and Vanilla Breeze. Nothing too fancy, but it does create a very nice, subtle effect. Plus, this box has Golden Feet! 🙂

Here’s the layout for the box. I sprayed each piece of paper with a bit of glimmer mist, using the same two colors I used on the box. Of course I’m going to distress everything as well, for which I’ll be using Tim Holtz’s Black Soot distress ink.


On to the creation of the dandelion. Fortunately the internet was there to teach me how to make one (check out Inna’s Creations, a very creative Israeli lady whose website I stumbled onto. She makes gorgeous paper art!). I started by creating the paper strip on this picture.

Roll up tight!

And spread the little petals. Done – A cute little life-sized paper dandelion! Thank you Inna! 🙂


I’m going to put this inside the box, so that when my friend’s friend opens it, a lovely, bright piece of summer will smile at her 🙂

So, this was part 1 – hope you enjoyed it!

I’ll be showing you the finished product in part 2. Until then, stay creative!

Decoupage: Five tiny boxes

Gallery

This gallery contains 5 photos.

This week I’m sharing five cute boxes that I altered by decoupaging them with napkins. The diameter of the little boxes in this gallery is appr. 1.75 inches (4,5 cm). A perfect fit for a fine chocolate bonbon! Red-White-Blue & … Continue reading