Guest Designing for Virginia’s View Challenge #17: All Things Embellished!

Good morning!!  If you’re looking for my Chibitronics LED stickers giveaway please click here!  And don’t forget my Instagram giveaway that can be found at my IG account: @JessicaAFrost!  Finally, thanks so much to all of my new email subscribers!!  As promised, the first five who pushed me over 100 subscribers yesterday will be receiving some happy mail from me!  However, I was so blown away by the response that I’d like to send out 10 more cards!  So I went through all of my subscribers, randomly chose 10 more, and I’ve emailed all of you to request your mailing addresses!  Thanks again for subscribing and I’ll try my best to keep you entertained!! 😉 Anyway, onto my actual post for today…

I am so ridiculously excited about this post…it’s been really hard keeping it under wraps for the last few weeks and I’m thrilled to finally share it with you all!  Awhile back I was asked by the fabulous Virginia Lu to guest-design for her challenge blog and I couldn’t say yes fast enough!! 😉  When she shared this month’s theme I knew exactly what I wanted to create…

I’ve always admired box cards as they look incredibly intricate and I was quite pleased to discover that they weren’t nearly as difficult as I had expected!  I’m hoping to do a video tutorial on creating a box card in the future but for today I’ll just describe my design!

For the actual box card structure I followed this tutorial found on SplitCoastStampers!  It’s incredibly well-written with easy to follow photos and instructions!  After my base was completed with dark blue-violet cardstock I add panels of gold glitter and light blue cardstock to give it an ocean feel with sand and water!

…Then it was time to decorate!!

The back panel of the box does not fold down and creates a sort of backdrop for your card.  On this panel I layered vellum and different colored cardstock cut at different heights with the Lawn Fawn Ocean Wave Borders die set.  Next I stamped the jellyfish from the Lawn Fawn So Jelly stamp set onto watercolor paper with versamark and heat-embossed them with gold embossing powder.  I colored them with Zig Clean Color Real Brush pens and blended them out with a clear wink of stella glitter pen.  I fussy cut each jellyfish, removed the stamped tentacles, and set them aside.  Then I strung a variety of seed and bugle beads from The Ton onto jewelry wire and adhered four strands to the back of each jellyfish to create sparkly tentacles!

I also stamped, heat-embossed, and fussy cut the grass from Lawn Fawn’s Gleeful Gardens, the starfish from So Jelly, and several sand dollars from Life is Good before coloring them with Zig Clean Color Real brush pens and wink of stella!  I added glossy accents to some of the critters for a little extra dimension and shine.

I adhered the grass and starfish to the box using my ATG gun and foam mounting tape.  Next I ran a laminating pocket through my laminator and cut the clear thick plastic into small strips.  I adhered the strips to the back of the jellyfish and then mounted the other end of the strip to the card.  I tried using plain acetate first but it wasn’t strong enough to hold up the beaded jellyfish.  The thicker laminated plastic supports the jellyfish but also gives them a little wiggle!  To create some ocean bubbles I added white pearl embellishments to strips of laminator plastic.  The bubbles appear to float around the jellyfish!

I stamped the sentiment from So Jelly onto white cardstock and die-cut it using the Mama Elephant Tags-A-Lot die set!  I adhered it to the front lip of the card with solid and striped dark blue twine and embellished it with sand dollar and a few starfish!

So that’s my card!

I hope you’ll break out your sequins, twine, enamel dots, pearls and gems, ribbon, bows, and more to play along with Virginia’s View Challenge this month!  And again, many MANY thanks to Virginia for inviting me to guest-design and thanks to you for stopping by!