Once Upon A Time - Fab 'n' Funky

Oooh, I'm a little bit excited today, as it's my first time posting the challenge on the Fab 'n' Funky Challenge blog since I joined the wonderful Funky Team. I've chosen what I hope will be a really fun challenge for all - 'Once Upon A Time' and I'm hoping to see lots of 'Fantasy' and 'Fairytale' imagery on your cards. So what did I prepare I hear you ask?

Here's the lovely 'High Hopes Rubber Stamp' that sparked my idea. It's such a sweet stamp and I knew once I'd seen our sponsor images, that this would be a great match.

Our sponsor for this challenge is the awesome Stitchy Bear Digi Outlet and they gave the Fab 'n' Funky crew some wonderful images to work with. So I've chosen a gorgeous princess image called Ice Princess. She reminds me very much of the Ice Queen from 'Frozen'. I love how the story ends and that it is sisterly love that prevails. So I've placed her in a setting not of 'ice' but of rainbows and fairytale creatures.

I didn't want the rainbow in the traditionally bright colours, as I felt it might overpower the rest of the images, so have chosen some gentler shades. I replaced the traditional rainbow red with Antique Pink Promarker and used Flexmarkers in Rose Peach, Buttercup, Meadow Green and Glacier Blue. I think it worked quite well for a gentler spectrum of colour.

The 'extra' details on my card, the castle, unicorn and rainbow, come from a lovely digi set available from an Etsy Store called PrettyGrafikDesign. There are a number of sweet digital paper kits and a mixture of pre-coloured and black and white digital stamps. I think this set worked really well with my lovely Ice Princess from Stitchy Bear Digi Outlet.

I recently saw a fabulous tutorial on how to make a 'box card' from a talented fellow crafter and have used her wonderful template to create the box base for my fantasy card. You can find Janine Quinn's tutorial via her website here.

This is the box pre-embellishment

I have used some of my all time favourite papers. Maja Designs Vintage Spring Basics and can I just say, I break out in a sweat just cutting into these gorgeous papers. I just want to keep them to stroke and look at! But I put on my big girl pants and made the chop! I must say, I'm delighted with how well they've come up as the base for this 'box card'. So many gorgeous pages in this 6x6 stack. But these ones were perfect for this project. I buy all my Maja papers from my favourite online 'Shabby Chic' craft store - Live & Love Crafts. So if you haven't checked out this gorgeous store yet, pop on over and have a browse.

This is the box with the embellishments added

I've seen this box card done with loads of embellishments exploding out of them. But I didn't want to overshadow the main stamp, so I've kept to just the simple sentiment on the front flap, added one to the back where I will add my message for my daughter and kept the side flaps clear, rather than adding more embellishment there, as I used the prettiest Maja paper on the sides and under the front flap. I love this paisley paper, it's one of my favourites from the set. I've edged all the papers in Peacock Feathers Distress Ink and used the same to stamp the sentiments. This can be found in the Spring set of the Seasonal Special edition sets from Tim Holtz. 

The stamp I've used on the writing strip along the back of the card, is from an older Lili of the Valley sentiment set. I feel it fit this card beautifully and supports the message so perfectly that I will be writing for my daughter.

          

One of the truly clever things about this box card design I think, is the way it is folded down to fit inside an envelope. If you're careful with the embellishments not pushing too sideways, it will actually fit in a standard A5 envelope. But if you've angled them as I have, you'll have to custom make your envelope a little wider. The above pics show the card flat with front flaps down, and then front flaps up ready to pop in the envelope. So clever!

This pic shows more clearly the acetate I've used to fix the images to the box base. I wanted them to sit a little higher up from the box, but didn't want white paper or coloured paper blocking the view of the elements behind. I'd just laminated a bookmark I'd made so I used the offcuts of the laminate to affix the stamped images to the base. I was so pleased with that simple solution!

    

Here finally are a couple of different angles of the box, to get a sense of the dimension and how all the embellishments work together. From the sides, it does look a little bare, and perhaps a few extra little things could have been added in. I toyed with the idea of adding some butterflies, but I'm of the 'less is more' school of crafting. As much as I admire the amazing shabby chic artists out there who pile so much deliciousness onto their makes, I just don't have that talent and mine just end up looking messy. So I stopped here and I'm pleased with it, as is.

Thanks for popping into my lil' blog today. I hope you've enjoyed your visit and weren't too overwhelmed by all the photos. But there seemed so much to show! Please join us this week at Fab 'n' Funky for our 'Once Upon A Time' challenge and show us your take on the 'Fantasy/Fairytale' theme. Do be sure to go and check out what my teamies have been up to over on the blog. They have made some truly gorgeous creations. For those of you who made it all the way to the end, thank you and here's a lil' pic of my sweet girlie excited to hold mama's 'precious' card. She doesn't actually realise it's for her here, she was just so happy I let her hold it! Big hugs, Wends x

Challenge Entries:
Papertake Weekly Challenge: Anything Goes
Crafty Catz Challenge: #224 ~ Anything Goes
Sister Act Card Challenge: #50 ~ Anything Goes
Inky Impressions Challenge: #153 ~ Fold It Challenge
Divas By Design: Birthday Blog Hop & Anything Goes
Loves Rubberstamps Challenge Blog: #97 ~ Anything Goes
Simons Says Monday Challenge: The One With Lots of Rules (April Fool) Anything Goes!
The Squirrel & The Fox: #66 ~ Inspired By A Book - The Snow Queen, Hans Christian Andersen