Happy Birthday Explosion Box

Isn't this a cute way to deliver a Birthday Gift Card? I was doing my weekly round of the blogs that I follow and I found this post on the CraftiBlog, where she placed treats inside of an Explosion box... So, I used this for my inspiration to create a Gift Card Explosion box.

We are going to a Birthday Party and I wanted a new way to deliver a gift card to the birthday boy, and this was fit the bill perfectly.  I followed the instructions found here to create this little box.  Note: It is a very small box, a standard gift card fits inside when it is at an ever so slight angle because the box measures 2-1/2" all around.

My base started as a 7-1/2" square and the paper itself is glitter paper from the DCWV Bon Voyae Travel cardstock stack.  The top is 4-1/4" square from the K and company ancestry.com Designer Paper pad.  The inside of the explosion are 2-1/4" squares cut from a DCWV mini stack that I have.

This is the decorated inside of the base of the box. Since this is for a birthday, I selected the birthday base.  I could have stamped, but I chose to use paper instead.

 This is the glittery outside of the base of the box.  Note, when I make another one of these, I will try to keep the glitter for the lid instead of the base because this paper is difficult to fold.

 This is the top of the box, you can see the ribbon that I used.  To attach the ribbon, I cut a square, slightly smaller than the top of the box and punched 2 holes using a standard hole punch.  I then pulled the ribbon (from Michaels) through the holes and used the extra length to wrap around the box and tied a knot on the side.

 This is how the gift card nestles inside the box, ready to explode.

I'd love to hear from you if this inspires you to create one of these. I'd love to see your creation.

This was a lot of fun to make, and I hope that the recipient enjoys their gift.

UPDATE: I am entering this in the Make It Monday Linky Party

Enjoy! Copyright for Personal Use Antonella DeFalco

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Birthday Card for a Boy

Hello my friends... I don't know about you, but I struggle when it comes time to make Birthday Cards.  I can't even explain why? Perhaps it is the pressure of creating something that a child will like :-)  or just the initial inertia of trying to come up with a card idea or design.  Of course, when it comes to children, I am probably giving it too much thought because the card probably wasn't even glanced at and has been forgotten in the midst of opening the gifts - lol.

I think "boy" cards frighten me even more than "girl" cards - I mean with girl cards you can at least fall back on pinks and flowers or glitter, but boys?? Even looking around online it is hard to find ideas that can be incorporated.

Well, we recently attended 2 Birthday parties for my son's friends, and you guessed it, they are both boys.  So I decided to surf the internet looking for inspiration... I passed up many of the designs, although very cute, were a bit too young.  I finally came across one of those pinwheels, you remember the ones we used to make when we were little (well, you do have to be a bit older to remember them - lol)...  And I decided that this would be my inspiration and came up with 2 similar cards based on a pinwheel theme.

Here is one of the cards I made (I promise to post the other one soon because I got a bit more bold with my palette and paper stash)

The card is 4 x 6 oriented with the opening at the top, on the short side.  I used a nice double-sided paper from ancestry.com K and Company paper pad to make the card base.  As you can see, I chose a palette of greens and blues (always appropriate for a boy).

For the pinwheel, I used 2 scrap pieces (Note: Next time I would definitely use a double-sided paper for the pinwheel):

• 2 - 3 inch squares
• I took the squares and cut in from each corner toward the center
• I mark my center with a little dot
• Do not cut all the way to the center, leave about 1/8 inch in from each corner (I added a little picture of a square with the center marked to show that you do not want to cut all the way through)
• This will create 4 "triangles"
• You then pull one corner from each of these triangles in toward the center and adhere it - you can look at the finished pinwheel to see this
• For this card, I used a glue dot and glued each end to the glue dot 
• I then used a K and Company birthday hat embellishment and added it to the center
• Note: on the other card I made, I used a brad to secure it

I then simply adhered to pinwheel to the card

For the sentiment, I printed and matted a nice "Happy Birthday" in Microsoft Word

Now, the only thing left to do was make sure that the inside of the card also looked nice.  So I matted a blank yellow cardstock and added a little header with a strip of paper left over from my pinwheel.

I really liked the way this card looked when I made it, and so did my son :-)

The next card will have a few more elements to make it a bit more interesting to look at.

Enjoy! Copyright for Personal Use Antonella DeFalco

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