Exploding Butterflies!

Don't worry I haven't been running around torturing innocent creatures, I've just been busy making my MIL's 70th Birthday card! Wow it's been a mission! Ever start a project and wish you hadn't? Well this was one of those!!! I honestly never thought I'd say this, but by the time I'd finished I was sick of the sight of butterflies!You would not believe how many times I thought I'd got enough butterflies only to discover that I needed more! It wouldn't have been so bad if I'd been my usual slap happy untidy crafting self, but in an attempt to keep my craft mess under control I've started tidying up as I go. So you guessed it I had to dig the stamps, embossing powders, paints etc out each time! If I make one of these again, I will leave everything out and also take a little more care when cutting around the butterfly's antennae!!! I'll warn you now, this post is both butterfly and picture heavy so my apologies on both counts ;o)

Anyway, this post is gonna be long enough without me blathering on, so I'll move things along! I wanted to make a something a little special for the MIL's milestone birthday, so I decided upon an exploding box using her favourite colours. I've made exploding boxes with floating butterflies in the past but not on this scale and certainly not using hand stamped, coloured and cut images!!! All I have to do now is hope that she likes it! Anyway, here it is:

The box is made from a  9" square piece of cardstock which has been covered with embossed and sanded Core-dinations card. I've distressed the edges of the cardstock very lightly before gluing the panels into place.

The flowers have been glittered before being mounted onto the box using silicone glue. I cut the wire stems from the flowers and used them to to make the glass pearl tipped tendrils.

I stamped the butterflies using Versamark Ink and then heat embossed them with a black glitter embossing powder. Hopefully you can see from this picture that the butterflies have been painted with mica paints which gives a really pretty pearlescent luminosity to them. I've added Stickles to edges of the wings and Glossy Accents to the bodies. I've also stamped and painted the reverse side of the butterflies and coloured the edges.

The sentiment has been computer generated and cut out using my nesties. I've then inked the edges with distress ink and given it a blast of Glimmer Mist.

The numerals have been die cut from th left over scraps of Core-dinations card, lightly sanded to reveal the core colour in places and then liberally covered in Stickles to give dimension and of course that all important glitz and glimmer!

Tools
Martha Stewart Scoreboard
Sizzix Big Shot
Sizzix/Tim Holtz Vintage Market Place Die
Sizzix Swirls & Dots Embossing Folder
Spellbinders Nestabilities - Labels 8
Heat Gun

Materials
Image - EJ Crafts
Sentiment - Wishes by TLC
White card - The Papermill
Core-dinations Whitewash Card
Flowers - from stash
Glass Pearls - from stash
Stickles - Star Dust, Platinum
Glossy Accents
Glimmer Mist - Dazling Diamond
Heat It Up Black Glitter Embossing Powder
Mica Paints
Distress Ink - Dusty Concord

I'd like to enter this project into the following challenges
By The Cute & Girly - Things with wings
Crafty Ann's Challenge Blog - Embossing
The Stampman - Anything Tim
CRAFT - Butterflies
PaperPlay Challenges - Things with wings
The Rubber Cafe - Spellbinders
Crafts & Me - Summer time
My Mum's Craft Shop - Swirls & Pearls
The Paper Shelter - Things with wings
Simon Says Stamp - Anything goes
Little Claire's Designs - Things with wings