Monday 20 December 2010

Poinsettia Explosion Box – Part 2

Today I completed the whole of the inside of the box. I have cut the petals and octagons, using the templates:

02 Petals and Octagons Cut

Before cutting the petal shapes from the rectangular pieces, I drew the outlines freehand, roughly following the design of the red shape I drew on the template, so that each one is different. I then stamped the bright red petals with a background rubber stamp which I’ve got, with an all-over crazed pattern, which didn’t cover as fully as I thought it would, so after the initial stamping, I continued stamping randomly over the petals without re-inking the stamp, and got a better effect. Unfortunately it doesn’t show up very well in the photos – the colour I used matches the dark red card. I then inked the edges of the petals with Pumice Stone Distress Ink – this has to be my favourite colour of Distress Inks because whatever colour card you use it on, it has the effect of simply darkening the existing colour. It’s very useful, and I think I probably use it more than any of the other colours.

After doing this, I embossed each petal with my ball-ended embossing tool, onto a piece of funky foam. This gives the petals a 3-dimensional, realistic look, and I’m very pleased with the result. Unfortunately this photo is slightly out of focus, but you get the general idea:

03 Petals Inked and Embossed

The flowers are made up by attaching some double-sided tape to the 1/4 in tab at the base of each petal, and sticking them to the back of the two squares – one large and one small – and to one of the green octagons. To soften the look of it a little, I used my corner-rounder punch on the squares. This is the inner flower, with four dark red petals stuck on each of the two squares. I decided to make a poinsettia centre out of little stamens and some wired crystals that I bought in a cake decorating shop – I made a hole through the centre of the squares after I’d glued them together, and also made a little green centre piece from a couple of flowers I’d cut with Jiminy Cricut recently but hadn’t used – I inked these with Forest Moss Distress Ink by spreading the inkpad on my craft mat, spritzing it with a little water, and smooshing them around in the ink. After drying them with my heat gun, I painted the edges with gold Perfect Pearls.

04 Inner Flower Complete

You can see that the smaller square is laid on top of the larger one at 45 degrees, so that the petals alternate with those attached to the larger square below.
When I do my next poinsettia explosion box, I think I might make the centre a circle rather than a square. The outer one is fine as a square, but I think a circle would look nicer.

The outer flower uses all the remaining petals, the bright red rubber stamped ones, attached all around one of the green octagons.

05 Outer Flower Complete

You can see that I have also inked around the edge of the green octagon – again with Pumice Stone Distress Ink.

The final step was to fix the inner and outer flowers together, lining up the petals so that they overlap.

06 Inner and Outer Flowers Combined

I stuck the two layers together with several strips of double-sided tape. I was a bit concerned that the wire and the backs of the stamens would be rather thick and make a lump, but I spread them around on the back of the inner flower, and layered them between small pieces of double sided tape, which distributed them nicely, as well as sticking them down firmly, and it came out nice and flat.
That’s it for today – next time I am going to make a start on the box itself. I have to decide how to decorate the green panels making up the eight sides of the box – it is a choice between stamping and embossing, and I need to sleep on it to decide!

5 comments:

  1. Yippee
    I got onto the blog and it loaded fine, and its even letting me leave a comment.
    Love how the explosion box is coming shoshi, its going to be srunning.
    Also looked at all your pretty flowers for the toilet roll Album they are really cute.bet your glad you got jiminy now, how did you cope before

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are so talented... just droped in to wish you and your family a Merry CHRISTmas. God bless, Lloyd

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shoshi this is going to be OUT OF THIS WORLD GORGEOUS!!! I SO can't wait to see the finished project!!! I LOVE the way your mind thinks!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh my! This is looking incredible!!! Great work, can't wait to see the finished project!!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. i cant see ur pix ? how can i see them , it's showing me ! <--- this, i so wana see ur result

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comments! They are much appreciated. Spammers, please be aware that I read and moderate ALL comments, and yours will be deleted before publication, so please don't bother!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...