Hot Air Balloons & Clouds Card In A Box

So far, the card in a box designs I've made have all featured flowers and butterflies.  I needed a thank you card for a male and I wanted to make it a card in a box.  Well, flowers and butterflies weren't an option so I had to ponder for a while.  I bought the Memory Box Beautiful Balloon die recently and I decided I'd try the card in a box with that.  A little while ago I came across this wonderful video on YouTube from Pam Sparks featuring Memory Box embossable dies.  Huge thanks to Pam for the inspiration!  

I made the card base from Soft Sky CS first, rounded the corners with a punch and I then worked on my balloons.  I die cut 4 white and 4 black balloons and dry embossed the 4 white ones.  I applied ink to each white balloon with a sponge dauber while the die was still in place - I used Marina Mist, Old Olive, Daffodil Delight and Real Red inks.  I then stamped a dotty stamp over the balloons in matching inks, again keeping the die in place.  I glued the white balloons over the top of the black ones after snipping the white baskets off and I attached the balloons to the card base, popping up the blue and red balloons.  I die cut lots of clouds, inked the edges of each cloud with Marina Mist ink and applied them to the card.

A straight front on view.

View from the other side. 

A close up of the balloons.

Here's the back panel where I wrote my message.

The finished card fits inside a C6 envelope but I went the whole hog and made an envelope using the SU! envelope punch board and Marina Mist patterned CS.  I layered two die cut label shapes for a name label and added Marina Mist Candy Dots to finish off.  I'm chuffed to say this card was very well received - warm fuzzies all round!

Supplies
Stamps: SU! 'Made for You' & 'Curly Cute' sets, Hero Arts 'Cling Dots' background stamp
CS: SU! Soft Sky, Real Red, Basic Black & Whisper White
Patterned paper: Marina Mist dotty paper from SU! Polka Dot Parade DSP pack
Ink: SU! Marina Mist, Old Olive, Daffodil Delight & Real Red, Memento Tuxedo Black
Tools: SU! scoring board, trimmer & envelope punch board, Memory Box 'Beautiful Balloon', 'Puffy Clouds', 'Bistro Label' & 'Chadwick Label' dies, X Cut corner rounder punch, sponge daubers
Embellishments & accessories: SU! Marina Mist Candy Dots, Dimensionals