Flower Explosion Box

Well, I have spring fever, even if the calendar and mother nature are not quite ready!  Spring ideas have been tumbling around in my mind - colors, flowers, quotes and sayings... I also had been thinking some time about making an explosion box, but I wanted to do something different.  So I thought...why not try to make a flower pot, fill it with flowers and then make it explode to have more flowers inside?


So here it is!  Lots of flowers made using paper and foil tape and a variety of Tim Holtz dies. Then the flower pot rim and flowers come off and the four parts of the base "explode" to reveal even more flowers and some springtime quotes.  It's all paper and chipboard except for the wire flower stems and some floral foam to hold the flowers.


The Flowers

I used four Tim Holtz dies to make the flowers - Tattered Florals, Tattered Leaves, Tattered Pinecone and Tattered Flower Garland.  Most of the flowers are made from Susan Winget's Nature paper (K and Company) to which I added various colors of Distress Inks.  I spritzed the paper very lightly with water to be able to mold the edges and give the flowers some shape.  The smaller daisies are made from metal tape from the hardware store which I attached to cardstock before cutting it with the die.  I colored those flowers with several colors of alcohol inks.  The leaves are mostly paper, although I did cut some from book cloth.

There are many wonderful videos out there on how to make flowers.  Tim himself did a recap when he issued his Tattered Florals challenge on February 22nd.  This video by Tonya Gibbs includes several flowers made from the Tattered Pinecone die.  So I thought I would show you the two ways I made and attached stems to the flowers.  The video is on the "In the Workroom" page and is called "3D Flowers with Stems".  I included a small piece on how to make the metal foil daisies as well.

I cut a piece of floral foam to fit inside the rim and painted it with black gesso.  The "moss" us made out of very thin strips of patterned cardstock which I crumpled up and used some Distress Stains to get the right color.  I used an edge distressing tool along the edge of the paper and then cut a 1/16 inch strip.  I think I used about 2/3 of a sheet of 12x12 paper to get enough to cover the floral foam base.  A whole lot of white glue keeps the crumpled strips in place.


The Flower Pot
This started out as both a mathematical and construction challenge.  First- how to make a pattern for the flower pot.  I knew that it was basically a cone and a cylinder, but the cone part is actually a conical frustum (since the point is cut off).  I turned to Google and found a great site that shows sheet metal workers how to draft a pattern in order to create this shape.  I followed their instructions, and voila- a pattern for the base of the flower pot.  Since I wanted the flower pot to "explode", I divided the entire arc into four sections.

I also needed support for the sections of the flower pot base, and wanted a flat inside piece to make the inside easier to work with.  I constructed patterns, cut up some more chipboard and used cardstock edge strips to attach them altogether.  A piece of Tyvek was used to make the super strong hinges that connect the four base pieces to the bottom, allowing the base to "explode".

The rim is two layers of mat board.  Mat board was necessary because of the length needed.  Two circular chipboard pieces slightly lower than the center of the rim form the base for the floral foam and keep the rim from going down any further on the base.

The Inside

I kept the inside pretty simple.  I added a second exploding layer for some interest.  I covered all the exposed sides with more of Susan Winget's Nature paper.  I found and printed some quotes and sayings about nature and spring and flowers.

Then I needed something for the center and decided to keep the flower theme going but do something a little different.  I did use one of the dies I had used before, the Tattered Flower Garland but I kept the flowers very simple.  Just a little bling for the centers and some thinner wire (painted) for some simple stems.

I wasn't sure what to put the flowers in but then I remembered Tim Holtz' new Tapered Fringe die that had just arrived.  I cut many strips of green patterned paper from the same Nature pad, which I distressed with various shades of green and then rolled up tightly.  I just added a little glue to the ends of the stems to keep them in place.










The Explosion - two ways
It's hard to show an exploding box (at least with my limited videography skills) - it all happens so fast!  The lighting in this video isn't super, but you get the idea...

I also found an app that allows one to create 360 degree movies so I'm trying it out to give you a sense of how the flower pot looks from all angles and a kind of stop-motion of the explosion.  See what you think...here's two to view.