Fall Explosion Box

So at the beginning of October, my husband and I went to Asheville for our second trip to the Biltmore Estate. We went in 2009, and absolutely loved it, but didn't have time to see everything. This trip we saw everything we missed last time, including all of the gardens and the Butler's tour.  I always recommend this place to everyone, it is so beautiful in the Blue Ridge Mountains, definately worth the trip!

So, on to my Biltmore inspired project.  I had a bunch of pictures...of course!  And I wanted to use them all!!! But I could only pick my favorites and chose an explosion box to show case them.

This is my first time making an explosion box, but I loved it! I used SVG Cuts Explosion Box set, but since I only have a 12x6 Cricut...I had to hand cut the actual boxes, using the template as a guide.

I did cut the box cover out on my machine just fine though.

For starters, I picked all of the pictures that I wanted to display in my box, I have a total of 22 pictures that I used including the one on the box cover.

I opened all of my pictures in Adobe Photoshop and resized and cropped them as necessary, then placed as many as I could on an 8.5"x 11" page. I needed two pages, one full and one with a few extra pictures that wouldn't fit on the first page.

My pictures range in size from approximately 2.75"x 2.75" for the cover to 2.5"x 2.75 for the outer box layer all the way down to about 1.5"x 2" for the smallest photo.

As long as you know the dimensions of the sides you are working with you can make them any size that will fit.

The next big challenge was picking the paper. I knew I wanted a fall theme, and I didn't really have too many options in my paper stash, so I resorted to the internet to see if I could find some good digital options...and I did!

I discovered Just so Scrappy and Just so Scrappy too. I used papers from Autumn Splendor and Happy Fall Y'all. These kits are full kits, meaning they have papers, embellishments and alphabets all at $1.50 for each kit!  These are my favorite sites to get great deals on digital products.

So these are the outsides of the box, but the fun is in the inside.

This is my explosion of fall picture fun!

On the first box layer (the smallest layer) I have my description of my trip. I wanted to add pictures under it, so that when you flip up the description there are two photos showcasing the Tiffany wall done in flowers.

I used a few other embellishments from SVG Cuts, listed below:

I used the Pick a Pumpkin set for my acorns, crow, gourd and pumpkin.

I used Crisp Days of Fall for the oak leaves.

Then I found a few random freebies that I can't seem to find online, and that would include the Autumn and Fall words as well as maple leaf and circle oak leaf frame.

I used some chocolate truffle brown twine from Trendy Twine.

There are so many sides to this thing, but it's pretty neat to watch people explore it!

I just love this little crow, so cute!

It's a little tricky to close back up making sure all the outsides of the box have the decorative part facing out, but I figured it out pretty quickly.

Since I bragged to all of my co-workers about my trip, I got them some magnets from the Biltmore, but it seemed so boring to just hand them a magnet, so I made them matchboxes...from the Crisp Days of Fall kit to dislplay the magnets in. I stretched out a cotton ball to make it look fluffy inside, and to sort of keep the magnet from moving all over the place. Since the magnets were all different I sorted them out by including the name of the person on the box. The box made the difference when I handed them out...Thank you SVG Cuts!