This octagonal exploding box is sure to WOW the outdoorsman recipient. It can serve as a treat box, gift card holder, or a gift item up to 3 inches deep, wide, and tall. But it is more than a gift box, as it creates a lovely display as a reminder for the outdoorsman of the hidden riches he cherishes about his outdoor adventures.
This 3D project uses a basic octagon exploding box design that I created, that you will find to be an extremely versatile design for many different themes. You can find the cutting file in the Pazzles Craftroom Image Library.
The Hidden Riches version of this project includes a hidden message on the inside of the box lid written using one of the new Single Stroke fonts, PA New Techogie , available for use with the InVue software. I used the Inspiration Pen Tool and Pen Spacing Tool with a standard black Papermate retractable ball point pen in my Vue to neatly print out the message I wanted to include.
To personalize this project for my husband and sons who love being in the woods, fishing, hiking, hunting, bird watching, photographing, etc., I wanted to add woodgrain panels to the outsides of the box sections. I found some nice woodgrain overlays in the Pazzles Craft Room Library. I needed to resize the panels to fit, but found that the details were a bit smaller than I wanted, so I used the WYSIWYG transformation feature available in the InVue and Inspiration Studio software to take just a piece of the woodgrain design at its original size, and add a frame around that piece. See the Pazzles video covering this feature.
The layered wood slice design worked well for the lid, and its layers were great for welding to the various cloned and rotated leaf designs on the inside of the box. There are lots of very nice leaf images in the Image Library. I chose Damask Leaf, both layers of Leaves, and both layers of Seaweed, resizing to fit the width of a panel of the box, and rotating clones to quickly provide the exploding layers. I used eight of the Damask Leaf rotated at 45 degrees, and four each of the others, rotated at 90 degrees, and welded them to one of the layers of the wood slice. See Klo’s classroom recording on how to rotate and clone. I used the pinecone and pine leaves from the Pinecone with Berries to decorate. The leaves were easy to fold at the point where they were welded to the base shape, so that they would fit inside the closed box, and pop out with the removal of the box lid. Four of the pinecones folded in half lengthwise and halves glued to each other formed the 3D pinecones for the lid and center of the box.
I glued the tabs on the lid to each other. To make the text created from the Impact font easier to use, I welded a narrow rectangle to the bottom of each word. The words created a nice border around the edge of the lid. I used ScrapFusion Permanent Adhesive for the entire project. It dries clear, quickly and securely. A small pile of this glue set to dry overnight is holding the pinecone firmly in place on the top of the box and in the center of the box.
I used Bazzil papers in greens and browns. There are 6 full 12”x12” sheets of monochromatic green paper and three colors of brown used in this project.
Although it looks complex, this project was easy to cut and assemble. It is a fun project to make, give, and receive.
~Julie
WOW! Very nice Julie. 🙂