Explosion Box Pt 5

Over the past few days I've made good progress and have pretty well finished the inside of the explosion box. Here's a general view of it:

and here it is, looking straight down on it:

You will see that I've completed the waving flowers. Each one is double-sided, and stuck onto a strip of clear acetate which is quite springy, so that when the box is "exploded," they wave about in a jaunty fashion! The strips were cut from the packaging around an Easter egg. (Not much gets thrown out in this house, I can tell you!!!)

Also you will see that on each flap of the box, there is a small pocket. I have made tiny cards to go into each of these. Whenever my friend and I email each other, we always send "Shalom" (Hebrew for "Peace") to each other, in abundance, so I decided to make this "a box of Shaloms" - there are seven altogether, and it will be her task to find them all!

Here are pictures of some of these little cards. The lines on my cutting mat visible in each picture are one inch apart, to give you some scale.

This, and several of the cards, have been given a bit more dimension by the addition of some shading - in some cases being lightly brushed across with a stamp pad, and others with some chalks, and the edges touched with a little "Rub-and-Buff" which is a metalic paste in a tube which you apply and then buff to a shine when dry.

This one is a photograph of an embroidered plaque I did several years ago, with the Hebrew and English letters spelling "Shalom," with the "L" letter combining in both - I really enjoyed mixing the embroidery threads on the needle to give the graduated rainbow effect:

This one has a number of small red hearts suspended inside from gold thread. These hearts are like sequins but without holes - I think they are called table confetti, and they are available in lots of different shapes, and are very useful for embellishments. I stuck them together in pairs with the end of the thread trapped between, and the other ends go through a slit in the crease of the card and are glued between the two layers so they don't show.

This one is a graphic I've got of a triptich of lilies, again greatly reduced to fit on the tiny card. Inside are strips of card decorated with chalk and gold, with Bible verses on them, and some cut out and applied flowers from some decorative paper I have.

My friend will have to look hard for this "Shalom" - a butterfly has landed on it! The inside has a seven-flower popup, but I made the flowers out of card rather than paper, which has made them a bit stiff, so it doesn't open very easily, hence my fingers holding it! Card would be fine for a larger card, but for such a small one, if I did it again, I'd use paper.

I did quite a bit of the text on the computer first - on my desktop publishing software, printing out a sheet of card with several frames containing text with different fonts and styles, measuring each frame carefully so that it was the right size for the project, and then cut them out and embellished them. I do this quite a lot with my cards - you get lovely results with the fonts, and I quite often emboss them with gold, too.

Work still to do: The lid, and some panels on the outside of the outer box, to strengthen it and also for decoration. I've found a marvellous Youtube video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbGqao5Gcw - giving instructions on how to use a Cuttlebug embossing folder for the background, and a Spellbinders Nestability die to make a plain oval with an embossed surround in the centre - it's quite complicated and has to go through the Cuttlebug machine several times to complete it, but it's exactly the effect I want, so I'm longing to try it. I can't do the panels until I've completed the lid, though, as I won't know how far down the sides of the lid will come. More pictures to follow!

We are hoping to see my friend on Thursday, to take her out for a meal for a belated celebration of "our" birthday, and I shall give it to her then - always assuming, of course, that I finish it in time!!