Crazicards Crafty Blog

This fabulous card was created by Sheila Jacob using  the Stream of Life stamp from the Sheena Douglass "A Little Bit Sketchy" stamp range.

Sheila stamped the image using a permanent Archival Ink before colouring in the image with her water colour pencils and once finished she covered the whole image with Glossy Accents to give the image a super tile effect.

I think the matting and layering really make this image stand out, and I love the other little touches with the ribbon, button, brads and the painted branch. They really finish the whole card off. Well done Sheila I am sure your son loved this fabulous birthday Card. Your card is now in the Crazicards Gallery on my website for all my visitors to see.

Hope you have a great week until next time happy crafting x

The theme for this months tag swap was Autumn Glory and we also had to incorporate the following colours,Gold, Bronze, Copper and Burgundy.

Autumn is my favourite time of the year as the colours created by nature are just amazing.

This is the gorgeous tag I received from Joyce. She has used Elusive Images stamps and Tim Holtz Distressed Inks with Gold and Copper embossing on the leaves.

The gorgeous little leaf towards the top of the tag has been stamped onto Stampbord and then double embossed making it look like a little tile. Sadly my photography skills will never do this  tag the justice it deserves.  I need to practise more....

I thoroughly enjoyed making my tag for this swap. The smaller tag went out of the window again as I just had to go large for his one.

I started by making a leafy background using my Mica Mask aptly called Leaves and a little light moulding paste. This is similar to embossing paste except it is White.

Once that was dried I painted it using Pearlescent acrylic paints in Gold, Copper and Green. I painted the whole tag in the same colours so that everything matched. Once that was dry I took my Sepia archival ink and stamped the fabulous tree from Crafty Individuals several times down the right hand side.

I then cut out and glued a section of the leaves I made earlier to the left hand side of the tag. Next I painted the letters in the required colours, Gold, Bronze, Copper and Burgundy. And once they were dry I glazed the letters G and R with Crystal Lacquer.

I then made the main leaves from Gold, Bronze and Copper metal. I have just discovered craft metal and I must say I really like the effects you can get from it. Once everything was dry I assembled the card using Collall 3D Glue Gel. And there you have it my Autumn Glory tag.

I sent it off to it's new home with Margaret on Monday and I hope she likes it :O)

In my previous tutorial we went through the steps required to make your exploding box and we inked and stamped all of the panels before putting the box together.

If you missed that first part you can see it again here.

Now for the fun part and that is making your butterflies and making them float inside your box.

What you will need

• Plain White card for stamping, you can use coloured if you prefer.
• Butterfly stamps of your choice - Gina K "Take Flight"
• Ink pads in your chosen colour - I used Black archival
• Acetate sheet
• Waxed Cotton thread
• Glitter or Sakura gel pens
• A fine liner pen in the same colour as your ink pad. 
• Promarkers
• Wet glue, mini pegs or paper clips

Step 1

Stamp you butterfly out 4 or 5 times depending on how many you wish to use for your project.

For this I used a dye based ink as I am going to use Promarkers to colour in my butterflies.

Once the ink is thoroughly dry cut out you butterflies as close to the image as possible.

Step 2

Now we need to stamp the backs of the butterflies so that when they are floating about they look real and don't have a white underside.

To do this place your stamp flat onto your work surface and ink it up with you dye based ink.

Now take one of your butterflies and place it gently down onto your rubber stamp.

Now you need to gently press down so that the ink from your stamp is transferred to the back of your butterfly. You can use a brayer for this step if you prefer. Don't worry if you have white edges we will correct that in a minute.

Step 3

You might end up with a small white line around the edges of your stamped image, if you haven't then skip straight to step 4.

This is easily fixed with a black fine liner pen or felt tip. Carefully go round the edges of your butterfly and colour in the white edges with your fine liner.

Taking care not to load too much ink onto the card as it may seep through to the other side and muddy you image.

Step 4

Once you are happy with the underside of your butterfly you can then go on to colour it in with your Promarkers.

Start with the top first and then once you are happy colour in the underside making sure that you follow the same colour pattern as you chose for the top.

This is to prevent the colours muddying up. Once you have coloured in all 5 you will need to make the antenna for each butterfly.

For this I used black waxed cotton and you can also add other embellishments if you like. I added a little black glitter so that it catches the light when the butterflies are bobbing around when the box is opened.

Tip: Don't add too much embellishment as this will make the butterflies too heavy and rather than float they will flop over.

Step 5

Next you will need to cut 5 thin strips of acetate, mine were just under 1cm wide and started off at 8cms long.

You need to make it longer than you will need as setting the height of the butterflies will require adjustments as you go along.

This is the trickiest part of the whole project and will take a little time to achieve the look that you want so please be patient.

Take your acetate strips and attach them to the underside of your butterflies with Glossy Accents , Collall Glue Gel or something similar. Take care not to crease the acetate as you need it to bounce once the bottom is attached to the box.

Hold the acetate in place with a mini peg or a paper clip until it is completely dry. Glossy accents dries a lot quicker that silicone gel so depending on how patient you are you can use either one....

Once the acetate has been attached to your butterflies you can then proceed to position then inside your box.

I chose to vary the height of my butterflies, to do this you simply place the acetate onto your box panels and slide it up and down until you get a level that you are happy with and where your butterfly will float quite nicely without flopping over, snip off any excess acetate.

To attach the base I used a combination of extra strong tape and a dab of glossy accents. Again take care not to crease the acetate as this will cause your butterfly to flop rather than float.

Tip:  Make sure to check the position of your butterflies each time with the box sides lifted up as you want the butterflies to spring out when the box opens. If they are all clumped together you run the risk of them getting tangled together.

And there you have it - An Exploding Box with a Twist. 

Here is another example of an exploding box with a twist. For this one I made some lovely little flowers and butterflies with Cosmic Shimmer Film and Angelina Fibres.

I hope you have had fun making your own boxes. The key is to experiment and have fun making them. Please feel free to send me the pictures of your completed boxes with a brief summary of the products you have used and I will show them off in an update blog. Send your images to support 'at' crazicards co uk.

Don't forget to visit my website for some great crafty bargains.

Thank you for reading and until next time Happy Crafting xx

I have always admired cards, tags and ATC's that are made from craft metal. They always look so fantastic and very difficult to do, hence the reason why I have never had a go myself until now.

I was recently having a look through the crafty blogs that I follow and two of them feature craft metal pieces on a regular basis.

So, as you do, I thought to myself  I am going to have a go at that and with the help of two fantastic tutorials from Artfully Yours.

So over the weekend I set about getting my things together that I would need such as craft metal, alcohol inks, moulding paste, idea-ology bits and bobs and some pretty ribbon etc. And this is the tag that I made. The colours are a lot better in real life. I spent quite a long time on this one but I thing the end result was well worth it and I will definitely be using craft metal again as it's not as scary as it looks..

If you haven't tried it yet I suggest you give it a go, I am sure you will love it.

Until next time then Happy Crafting x

We have all seen the conventional exploding boxes which contain several layers decorated up and which fall open once the box lid is removed. I wanted to try the exploding box but I also wanted to do something a little bit different inside instead of the layers.

So I decided that as I love butterflies so much I would have to incorporate them  in the design of my box. The though of floating butterflies was quite intriguing too. By the end of this two part tutorial I am hoping that you will be able to create your own exploding box with a difference.

What you will need

• Coloured card for making your box and for matting and layering.
• Card for stamping.
• Stamps of your choice - I chose Elusive Images Eastern Grasses and Gina K Take Flight
• Ink pads in your chosen colours
• Acetate sheet
• Waxed thread
• Glossy accents
• Glitter or Sakura gel pens
• Promarkers
• Wet glue and small pegs or paper clips

 Getting Started

Step 1

The hardest part for me was to choose the right colour combinations of card and the stamps I want to use. I eventually decided on Lime Green plain card stock for the main box and shiny black mirror board for the matting. I chose super smooth white card for my stamping surface as I find this always gives a good impression.

Step 2


As the Eastern Grasses stamps from Elusive Images  are quite long I needed to make my box large enough to accept the full image of each stamp. To do this I simply measured the largest stamp from the set. After measuring and adding a little for matting and layering it worked out that I needed a box that had sides of 4.5" tall and at least 3" wide. This worked out great as it meant that I could use a 12" x 12" sheet of card for the base of the box. My card looked something like this:


Next I made the lid using the same principle but I added 1mm to two adjacent sides to ensure the lid fit snugly onto the box base.

The depth of the lid sides is entirely up to you. The image to the right is what I had by the time I had cut out the base and lid. At this point to make life easier label each side of your box and lid. This will make life much easier for you when you create your matting an layering as you will label each piece as you go along.

The next step is to make all your mat and layers for each side of your box base and your lid. This takes a lot of time depending on how many layers you go for but take your time as you want the layers to look great. So choose the colours that match your main design as well as your box colour.

I wanted to make my stamped layers pop so I made a mat from glossy black mirror board to sit between my stamped layer and the box base. You can miss this part out if you prefer and just use distressed inks to highlight the edges of your stamped panels.

Tip: Don't forget to make enough panels for both the inside and the outside of your box base. By the time you have made all your panels it should look something like this.

Step 3 

Now you need to glue your box lid together making sure all the edges are lined up, use your little pegs or paper clips to hold the corners in place whilst the glue dries. (I am presuming that you will know how to make up your box lid so please feel free to contact me if you have never made a box before, I am always happy to to help).

Step 4

Next comes the fun bit - decorating your panels. There are so many possibilities when it comes to decorating your box panels. You can stamp them, you can paint them and you can even decoupage them if you wish, the choice is entirely yours, the main thing is to have fun and enjoy what your doing.

I decided to ink my panels with Tim Holtz Distressed Inks and then I stamped them with my Elusive Images Eastern Grasses stamp set. At this point you can add highlights to your stamped images or you can mount them onto your matting layers and them add embellishments, glitter and highlights if you wish.

I added small amounts of glossy accents and I also used my Sakura Glitter pens to add highlights. Once you have finished all you panels mount them up onto your matting layers, matching each numbered or lettered layer together, (did you remember to number them?).

Once you have finished you will have something like this image to the right. In total you should have 14 panels depending on whether you decided to cover each panel or not.

Step 5

The last step for making the box is to put all your panels onto their corresponding box flap, base and lid. Inside and out. Now you can just keep your box as it is or you can add a little twist so that when the box opens you get a lovely surprise. There are many different things you can do such as flowers, butterflies, dragonflies, balloons etc.


As I mentioned previously I decided on butterflies so here is a sneaky peak, I will show you how to make these floating butterflies in the next newsletter.


I hope you have enjoyed my ramblings,  until next time happy crafting :O)