Custom Butterfly Box With Opening Wings Lid

This is a one-off custom made butterfly box made for the Summer Craft Competition promoting collaboration between stock photographers and craft makers.
Summer Contest: Part 2 Let's craft!Welcome to part 2 of this awesome contest that seeks to bring the Stock & Resources and Artisan Crafts galleries together. On part 1 the S&R guys created beautiful images for you to use and get inspired by. We want to invite everyone to craft, so there will be novice and intermediate/advanced prizes. We hope that you will join the fun!
The concept
As crafters we often require references, but we don't always remember that DA has a whole gallery full of resources at our disposal. Need to sculpt a skull? Decide a background for that cabochon? Find the perfect action pose? Figure out the parts of a cat's leg?

I really love the idea of this project, and love to collaborate with other inspiring people. This box was inspired by the wonderful monarch butterfly stock photo by Egil21. Go check out her gallery of amazing photos.

The box and lid were cut in four layers with a scroll/fret saw to a pattern that I made from tracing the photo. I then wood burned the wing pattern on both sides of the lid because monarch butterfly wings are patterned similarly on the underside. I then added colour and finish to it. It went against my nature to then have to cut its wings off, but of course I would be re-attaching them via small hinges so that they would rise up and down like butterfly wings, and act as the opening lids of the box.

I then cut out the middle body part (which I’m sure someone will tell me the scientific name for) and added antennae made from copper wire and beads spray painted dark brown. It sits on a layer of felt which is the fluffy hair on the butterfly, but it doesn’t come out too well in the photo.

The box is lined with felt in the same pattern as the wings, which meant painstakingly cutting out tiny pieces of felt and trying not to glue them to my fingers instead of the box bottom! Never again!!!!

Oddly the hardest part of this entire project was painting the base of the box. I nearly threw it out the window on several occasions. At first I couldn’t get an even coat, so I put an acrylic base on it as a primer. This was a disaster, and the acrylic started to peel off. So I sanded it all back and started all over again. This time I used a proper oil-based primer, but it didn’t cure properly and after several attempts to patch it up I ended up sanding the whole thing off again and starting all over.

Finally after some online research I discovered that particular raw woods such as pine are notoriously difficult to get an even coat of spray paint on. Also I discovered that you can get a spray primer which I got and hey presto! It filled in tiny holes in the grain, and provided a sooth and solid foundation for the spray paint. I decided to use a textured spray paint on the base just to tone it down and blend into the background more because I want the butterfly to stand out.

I've included some work in progress thumbnails around the sides to give you a feel for how it was made. So that’s it. I hope you like it. It’s certainly unique!