"Mum's" Day Exploding Box

As mentioned in my last post, I found this great washi paper with multi-colored mums on it.  So pretty!  I made some cards with it, but then had the idea to make a mum-themed exploding box with it.  What better occasion than for Mother's Day, right?  Right??

There are so many pretty colors in the washi paper that it was hard to narrow down which ones to use in the box!  Well, besides the limitations of the Michael's card stock supply.  I went with a pink base and used blue and green accents.  The mum on top of the lid was made by layering different sized daisies from a Sizzix die, simply called "Flowers, Daisies", and one (the smallest) from a daisy punch.  I like it-the daisies are sort of ragged and imperfect.

Surprise- a pot of handmade paper mums in the center!  There are also two blue mums on the inside panels that you can't see very well in the pictures.  The other panels say "Happy Mum's Day"...yeah, I know, sort of cheesy, but hey, it's cute!  The one thing I did not think of was to leave a panel blank for a written message, so I may remove one of the blue mums for that purpose.  Anyway, I liked how the pot of mums came out.  There are two different sizes of flowers , 3 larger and 4 smaller. This was much easier to do than the daisy pot I did last year, or the rose one from a few months ago, which had at least a dozen individual flowers each.  They were small though, so what I have figured out is bigger is better!  You still get the look of a nice full pot of flowers but without quite so much labor!  These are made by, again, layering punched daisies of different sizes, which are then hot glued to a metal wire.  The wire I found in the floral department is covered with a green fabric-type stuff, so they look like flower stems. Those are stuck into a halved round Styrofoam ball that is sunken into the pot and hot glued so that they don't pop out.  Once the flowers are secured into the pot, I added shredded green tissue paper.  The pot is hot glued to the center of the box.

I won't be listing this in my Etsy shop, at least not yet- I wanted to have 3 exploding boxes to display at the Salem Etsy Team Spring Craft Faire, which is next Saturday.  If it doesn't sell there, I may list it in my shop then.

Speaking of the sale next weekend, I still have lots of things to do to prepare!  Most of my display props are still packed up from the Jane Austen Faire, but I still have things to do like print and cut coupons to give away with purchases, make some sentiments that can be added to the front of cards, and make sure that I have all the price signs I will need.  Guess I better get cracking- only 6 days til the sale!