Hi friends , I am sure you have all been fascinated by musical boxes at one time or the other!I once got a dancing ballerina Musical Box as a Christmas gift many many moons ago and though its literally an antique piece now, I still love to wind it up and hear the sweet melody it metes out!
Exploding boxes seem to be very popular amongst crafters who sell handmade cards and gifts - I guess its because they are so easy to make and always have that "WOW" factor!
Mini wooden Piano
I made my first exploding box using this beautiful Pinewood Piano which is part of the new collection of super cute mini furniture at Crafters Corner
Piano
This piano is just the right size to add to an exploding box ,a mini doll house room ,or a handmade desk caddy set.The cute piano looks gorgeous as it is but my crafting consultant [ my 8 year old kiddo] said a black one would be more stylish!
Wooden Mini Piano
To customize the piano : Place the piano on the paper you want to use for lining and draw around it with a pencil and cut out the outline.You can use pattern paper, card stock, tissue paper or whatever you fancy.
Wooden Piano
I had recently shared 12 MDF altering ideas and just sharing a small tip on lining objects with paper - ink the edges of your paper / card stock outline to mask that white glare from the cut paper edge-- its a little point but makes your final project look so much neater!
Inking Card-stock
You can heat emboss a pretty stamp on your cut out outline paper or glitter it up before sticking to the piano. I actually discarded the cardstock and went with adhesive backed glitter foam for my piano. Paint the rest of the piano in matching colors using acrylic paint and a thin paintbrush.
Mini Piano
All the red roses in this project were made from foam using the Spellbinders Baubble blossom 1 die[ will share a tutorial if you want].
I am personally not a big fan of videos but there is no other way I can show you how the little piano rotates while playing music! Its a super short video so do click the play button!!
How to make a Musical Box Card
You need to source a wind up musical box to make your own musical box card. I could get one from my neighborhood fancy store. It was a sorry looking dusty and rather garish doll which was gathering dust in the gifts section !I think over time we crafters get tuned to see the " crafty potential" behind many items ,so yeah I went ahead and rescued the poor unwanted doll from the shop !
Musical box
I could easily remove the doll from the plastic casing of the musical box base . Dressed up the box with corrugated paper and beaded lace. I guess most of us crafters use the glue gun left and right. I too love it as its quick, economic, and dries super fast but yes I hated the burns which it inevitably used to give till I got the"Finger Caps"
Musical Box Alteration
These Finger caps manufactured by the Mod Podge guys actually allows you to touch the melted hot glue without getting scalded! And I find them most useful to glue on a trail of beads as I can touch and glue them perfectly on the hot glue line!
There are dozens of tutorials on how to make exploding boxes of all dimensions in the net - just sharing the dimensions of this particular one so that its easy for you to use musical boxes available in our local market [my kiddo has 3 musical boxes and we found all nearly the same size].
I used a 12 and 3/4 inch square Ivory sheet to make the base of my exploding box. Used the Scorpal to score it every 4 1/4 inches both ways as shown [ red dotted lines indicate score lines].
Exploding Box tutorial
Chopped off the corner squares to make a "cross" as shown below.
Exploding Box
If you have a corner rounder punch or crop a dile corner chomper you can round off the edges of the square for a more stylish finish!
Exploding Box
Cut pattern paper into 4 x 4 inch squares and stick on your base. I stamped the pattern paper with musical notes ,corner designs, a clock,a bird silhouette and added a "Love" stamp to make my musical box a bit romantic !
Sue Wilson Bow
The leaves of my handmade foam rose are punchcraft leaves [see Leaf tutorial ].The bronze " I love you " charm actually opens like a book to reveal script inside! All the silvery tiny pearl dots were made using liquid pearls!The silver bow is my current favorite Sue Wilson Bow die!
Handmade foam rose
Fussy cut the bird cage from a Mariposa paper stack and added it to give the birds company. The silver fence is another favorite Memory box die [ also seen in Fairyland Diorama].I love the cute variety of charms floating around in the craft world these days and I could use matching yet different charms for each panel of my exploding card!
Singing Bird Charm
Added a singing bird charm to stamped musical notes and a silver foam key [cut with Spellbinders Lacey heart]
Foam roses
I feel almost tempted to ask you guys " how many birds are there in this project? " LOL !! Well music and birds seem to match so perfectly!!
Exploding Box
Though I love making fancy fold and pop up cards this is my first exploding box- I hope you liked the musical box idea too.
Another note : Recently a crafter Ayoti Mittra shared the photo of a beautiful Diwali Lantern she had made using the the 3 D lantern tutorial I had shared here. [to see Ayoti's lantern just scroll down the comments on this Altered Bottle photo] Thank you so much Ayoti...It feels so good when my tips and tutorials are put to such good use!
