Exploding box birthday card

Afternoon all!  I hope you are all having a great day.  Today I thought I would share a project I made last month for my Mum’s birthday.  I always feel a wee bit of pressure when it comes to cards for family and friends to make them something special.  When I saw people making these exploding box cards on Youtube tutorials I knew I would have to give them a try.  This is only the second one I’ve made and I wanted to include some of the special memories from our recent wedding trip to South Africa.  This was my Mum’s first time in South Africa and so the theme of the box was her South African adventure!

The outside of the box was decorated with a poppy print and a simple die cut.  Inside I used photographs from our trip along with Graphic 45 papers and embellishments and a selection of die cuts.

I love how these just look like a simple gift box….

… until you take the lid off and it falls open to reveal lots of different sections!

Pictures of my mum with her friends who made the journey to South Africa too.

A photo of Mum and I just before we got on the safari truck to get to the ceremony and when the Mum’s met the night before the wedding.

The wedding venue was a game reserve and we managed to squeeze in a couple of game drives….

Including a fab sun downer drive the day after the wedding watching lots of beautiful giraffes.

A few pictures from the visit to Cape Town

I’m pleased to say that she was totally surprised and loved it so much she has been carrying it around in her handbag to show people!

Anyway I hope that you like it too?  Have you made any of these exploding box cards?  Do you also feel the pressure to make something that little bit more special for friends and family?  Thanks for stopping by and hopefully see you again soon.  Bye for now

Blue Daisies

Hello!  Hope you are having a great week and that you have found some time for a crafty project or two.  It’s been perfect summer weather for crafting here (i.e. pouring rain interspersed with brief sunny spells!) and the garden is loving it too.  The lettuce is growing faster than we can eat it and we’ve had the first crop of courgettes and spring onions!  Anyway I’m not here to talk about my veggie garden……

I thought I would share a project I made today for a customer.  They asked for a sympathy card with a simple sentiment.  It’s never easy designing cards for a sad occasion but after playing around with a few ideas I came up with this clean and simple design using blue daisies.

First I stamped the image using archival ink.

I used distress inks and a water brush to colour the stamped image.

I used the faded jeans distress ink to create a wash effect background to stamp the sentiment onto.  Then snipped a sentiment banner 

Then I just assembled the card using a black mat under the picture.

I hope they like the card and that they don’t need to use them anytime soon.  Thanks for the kind comments I got on my first blog post.