Frosty Home - home shaped exploding box

For my make this week I thought I would have a play with the exploding box format and create a house.  I have used 12 x12 cardstock for the base of the project and then decided to use papers from one of last years collections - using the 12 x 12 and 6 x 6 Fosty Sparking papers which have a beautiful soft blue, beige an dpink colour way. Whilst some of the motifs are most definitely Christmas orientated the reverse sides and some of the focal pages would also make beautiful new baby makes making them really quite versatile.

 I started by creating the base for the box by cutting the 12 x 12 so it measured 30cm by 30cm and then divided it on my score board at 10 and 20 cm on both sides creating a grid of 9 from which I cut out the outer 4 panels leaving me a cross shape.

The roof of the house was more complicated to make and I deliberately chose to work in inches as this makes the rood ever so slighly bigger than the base meaning the lid aka the rood goes on and off the base more easily. I took a 4" square of cardstock and marked along two opposite sides 1" up from the bottom and then on the edge furthest from these marked the central point. These lines were then scored to give the shape of the gable end. I then marked 1/2" up from the score lines and cut off the small triangle so that I had a flap which could be adhered to the roof top itself. (you will need two of these).

The roof is simply a 4" x 8" panel scored in half adhered to the gable end pieces. To complete the lid I cut 5" long strips of card 1" wide and then scored at 1/2" and 41/2" to give tabs to adhere to the straight part of the gable ends. To gable ends were covered in paper from the collection and the roof was decorated using 1" strips of paper trimmed with a scalloped punch to give strips which were adhered on top of each other starting from the lower edge of the roof.

For the main part of the box I cut pieces of paper 9.8cm square and distressed the edges with a pair of scissor before adhering in place. BEFORE decorating the outside of the box any further I then turned my attention to the inside of the box adding a base layer of paper 9.8cm square to the panels followed by a 9cm square of paper raised on foam tape. Additional elements cut from the paper along side scraps of lace were then added along with some of the beautiful new chipboards from the shop -Hello Winter baubles 02 and   Hello Winter baubles 03 but there is a huge selection to choose from if you prefer a different motif. On one of the side panels I added a pocket cut from the inside of cover of the 12 x 12 papers and slipped in a piece of folded card 3" x 6" giving a place for the giver to write a note for the recipeint or to put a gift card in.

 For the center of the box I added two wood christmas trees on top of a third 7cm panel of paper that had a lovely icon in the corner, lace and then lots of White pastel flowers.

Having completed the inside of the box I returned to the ouside adding 11/2" wide panels of paper on foam pads to the walls before adding fussy cut elements from the papers and lace. For the front of the house I added one of the new Hello Winter chipboards with a street scene shaker element (this is no longer in stock but the show flake shaker will fit in the space as an alternative or you could just select another chipboard from Hello Winter range). Finally I added a pastel sky blue shabby ribbon bow and another pastel flower to the apex of the gable.

I do rather like my exploding house box and hope you do too.