Valentine in a Box Thank You Card

Yes, Valentine's Day is past for this year, but I just had to share a Valentine I made at the last minute.  I've been looking at the variety of "card in a box" cards on the web (video tutorial) and just HAD to try it for our dance teachers who were giving up their Valentine's weekend for a special dance event. 

Materials:

• Red Card Stock
• Silver Glimmer Paper
• Black Paper
• Fancy Hearts Foil Papier Tole (from Paper Wishes)
• Thank You Mini-Stamp (from Inkadinkadoo)
• Red Ink
• Clear Embossing Powder
• Scalloped Hearts Dies (from Spellbinders)
• Asian M-Bossabilities Embossing folder (from Spellbinders)

Method:

1. Prepare the base "box".  There are several tutorials on how to do this, including several on my Pintrest board.  It really is quite easy to do.  Basically you: Make a scored tube; cut between the panels and fold down the "flaps"; add a couple of brace pieces in the middle of the top of the "box" to which elements can be adhered.  Next comes the fun part - decorating.
2. First I made panels to cover each portion of the box.  Each panel consisted of a piece of silver glimmer paper matted on black before being adhered in place.  All except the back panel were embossed (see tip #1 below).  The back panel was left plain for a message to be written on it.
3. For decorative elements I used a "heart" theme. Some of them were simply elements from the Papier Tole set, but several started as silver hearts matted in black (see tip #2 below). The first one I made is the "thank you" element you see in the back.  After cutting and embossing the silver heart I stamped it in red and then heat embossed it with clear embossing powder. The remainder weren't stamped - I simply added elements from the Papier Tole set - often with foam tape for added dimension. Many of the elements were attached to clear acrylic strips to allow them to "float" above the surface of the "box".
4. The small butterfly was also an element from the Papier Tole set.  I wrapped wire around the body and twisted the ends, then glued it to silver paper and cut right around the edge.  This hid the wire ends and gave a more finished look from the back. Then I added dots of red Stickles to decorate the wings. Here you see a picture of the butterfly with the wire attached and the silver paper partly trimmed off:

Tip #1: The embossing folder I used had a strong pattern to it and I wanted that patterned centered nicely on all of my panels.  SO, I lined up the first one as I wanted it, then put strips of tape on the embossing folder aligning them both above and to the right of the panel to serve as guides for the rest of the panels.

Tip #2:  There are several ways one can mat the hearts, but I wanted to do as little "fussy cutting" as possible, so did it this way.  Each of the matted hearts is actually made from 2 silver and 2 black hearts that were all cut using the same die.  I cut the two black hearts apart to create an easy mat before adding my acrylic strip (for attaching to the box) and hiding it all from the back with the second silver heart.  In this first picture you see how I cut the first black heart apart.  As you can see, the missing piece is already attached as a part of a mat on the silver heart. 

The remaining piece is attached to the bottom of the heart (a couple of the scallops were actually cut off because they didn't align as I wanted them to do).  Then I cut pieces from the 2nd heart to finish out the mat, trimming as needed to give a nice look.

Here's a picture of the card as it is folded and ready to slide into the envelope:

Just another quick note.  I found that folding the box one way gave me a slimmer profile than folding it the other way.  If I had folded it the other way, it wouldn't fit in the envelope!