A butterfly explosion card

Back in the day, explosion cards, where a piece of paper bigger than the actual card opens out when you open the card, were A Thing and I've noticed them popping up (groan...... see what I did there?) again here and there, so I thought it was about time I revisited the technique.

The idea is quite simple, once you've worked out what size of paper to use. There is a  simple fold called the Turkish Map Fold (lots of articles and videos about it can be found by googling) that makes the paper sit neatly folded in the card until it is opened and then...... POP!!! The whole thing springs open.

I used a 20cm square of paper to sit inside a 10cm square card, which worked very neatly. I wanted to make sure I got the orientation of the stamping right, so I did a test fold with scrap paper and made notes on it to show where I wanted everything to go.

Then I did the stamping on a still-unfolded square of paper, using a gorgeous set of Indigo Blu stamps that was a magazine freebie last year. I set it aside for a few minutes to make  sure the ink was completely dry before starting to fold (actually that's a bit of a porkie-pie, I set my second attempt aside to dry, on account of what happened when I folded the first too soon). If I'd remembered to use a faster drying ink, it wouldn't have been necessary.....

For the outside of the card, I used more stamps from the set to make the panel, then unearthed an ancient scrap of shrink plastic and stamped the large butterfly twice with Stazon, cut it out and shrank it to make the embellishments. 

I am sharing this with

Crafty Gals Corner - Fancy Folds
Use Your Stuff - Black and white
Addicted to Stamps - Anything Goes
Butterfly Challenge - S is for Stamping (sorry, no sapphire this time!)
Shopping Our Stash - Fantastic Plastic
Mod Squad - The Great Outdoors
Inkspirational - Pop