Wicked Good Birthday

 

Our granddaughter recently celebrated her eighth birthday with  a Wicked (the movie) themed party. In as much as her gramma loves themed cards, this was the card she came up with for the birthday girl.

This display style "Showcase Pop Out Card" was designed and taught to us at a recent crafting get together by our dear friend Lori. A little difficult to see in this photo but the center panel of this card pops out as a 3 dimensional frame when the card is opened. I ran metallic gold cardstock through a Sizzix "Stars & Swirls" embossing folder for the two side panels, and used pink glitter cardstock with green foil board for the bottom drop down panel to give this card a max amount of glitz and bling. The center panel was created from a sticker purchased from RedBubble. On my request, dear Lori helped to make this extra special by adding her magical Stickles glitter enhancements.

Here's what the card looks like with the bottom panel pushed up and the side panels closed, ready to be tucked into an envelope. I also added a belly band with images of Elphaba's boot and Glinda's shoe which were part of a set of "Wicked" clipart purchased on Etsy.

Our birthday gift to our granddaughter was a year's subscription of monthly STEM project boxes from her favorite  Crunch Labs. Since there was no physical gift for her to unwrap, I made a pretend "giftcard" by sizing and printing Crunch Labs' logo onto cardstock and running it through my thermal laminator. I put together a simple pocket style giftcard holder embellished with another "Wicked"clipart image from the set purchased. Always fun to come up with themed cards and gifts!

Recessed Window Grad Card

School's out and graduation season is upon us again. It's been awhile since I've made a recessed window card style graduation card so I searched my archived cutting files to make this card. Just had to quickly edit the file with the current year and personalize with the graduate's name. 

It's hard to tell from the photo, but the recessed window card is similar to a shadowbox style card with a depth of one-fourth inch. I added a photo I found online of the graduate's high school campus inside the window, covered it with clear acetate, then added the cover plate panel with the graduate silhouette and class over it. I used Arial font to cut the graduate's name on the front panel and backed it with a layer of acetate and gold glitter cardstock.
 

On the inside of the card, I added a pocket decorated with the school emblem for a place to tuck a gift envelope. The mortarboard cap and tassel used on the envelope was cut using a very old Quickutz die.

I liked that this recessed window card came together quite quickly and am thinking I should start using this card style more often.

Milestone Birthdays

As much as I love and enjoy my hobby of making and sending birthday cards, being that I'm a very slow crafter, I can usually only manage to finish enough cards each year to send to close relatives and a few crafty friends. This year, however, several of the close friends I grew up with are celebrating milestone birthdays so I decided to challenge myself by trying my very best to make and send special milestone birthday cards to each. This card was the first of  the seven I hope to complete this year.

I used a quilted coverplate die from Honey Bee Stamps to create a stitched background and added a paper pieced Franklin teddy bear from Marjorie Ann Designs together with lots of flowers die cut from Spellbinders "Be Bold Blooms" die set. Tiny butterflies were cut from Memory Box "Butterfly Delights" die. Happy Birthday sentiment was hot foiled and die cut using Simon Hurley's "Birthday Sentiments" set.

On the inside, I used Karen Burniston's "Twist Flower Pop Up" die set again for the mechanism to animate a large center panel with another paper pieced teddy bear and a double tiered cake. I used  Marianne  Designs "Birthday Cake" die for the cake and a very old  QuicKutz "Studio" alphabet die set for the glittered gold "70".

After assembling the teddy bear, cake and flowers together, I scanned and imported the image into Make the Cut design program so I could create and cut a shadow layer for it.

I also put together a simple matching gift card holder to enclose with the card. 

Initially, I started jotting down all the measurements and instructions needed to recreate this pop up  card with the intention of  making six more of the same to send for all the milestone birthdays I mentioned. Though the overall design of this card seemed simple enough,  it took a bit longer than I expected to cut and assemble all the embellishments needed. Looks like I may have to come up with some alternative ideas for a card that will be quicker to complete.

Puppy Twist Flower Pop Up Card

Knowing how much my niece loves her Malshi (Maltese + Shih Tzu), I wanted to surprise her with a card that featured a likeness of her dog for her birthday.

I found some adorable digital doggie clipart created by artist Yuki of Elytra Studio on Etsy and just had to pick up a set. I thought one of the images looked just like my niece's dog, so I created a cut file, cut her from white cardstock, then used Copics to color her up to look like my niece's beloved "Kinako".

For the card front, I used a cut file for an open scallop circle to frame the dog and embellished with flowers die cut using Spellbinders "Be Bold Blooms" die set. Happy Birthday sentiment was hot foiled and cut with Spellbinders "Birthday Unboxing Glimmer" set. I also randomly glued on a few flatback clear dewdrops to add some sparkle.

 

Inside, I used Karen Burniston's "Twist Flower Pop-Up" mechanism on a panel I created with another paper pieced dog and flowers. As the card is opened, this panel twists and rises up to the center of the card. The "Twist Flower Pop-Up" die set comes with large daisy dies to attach to the mechanism (thus the name "Flower Pop-Up"), but I'm finding it fun to use this mechanism to animate a lot more than just flowers.

To create a matching gift card holder, I enlarged the dog image and had her hold onto a little paper pieced envelope which opens up to reveal a gift card.

And finally, here's the photo of my niece's sweet little dog, "Kinako" which I used as inspiration to create her birthday card. Isn't she absolutely adorable?

Daruma Pop Up Card

For my sweet friend Lorna, who enjoys all things related to Japanese culture and tradition, I created this Daruma themed birthday card.
 

The inspiration for my card came from this super cute Daiso shopping tote decorated with images of many colorful Daruma dolls.

I especially loved the different whimsical faces of each daruma on the Daiso tote, so I scoured the internet in search of cute daruma faces. After finding a few, I print and cut them and used them to piece together several daruma in fun, bright colors. Cutting file for the Daruma doll bodies was created in Make the Cut Design program.

On the inside, I used Karen Burniston's Photo Fan Pop Up die set to install the mechanism for this fun Daruma pop up. 

The Fan Pop Up mechanism is made up of a half circle with six spokes, so I attached a Daruma doll to each spoke and three more onto the half circle. To hide the spokes, I attached three different sizes of cherry blossoms which  were die cut using the Cherry Blossoms Outline die from Wiki CAPS. Flower centers were punched from gold foil board using a Punch Bunch mini punch.

I decided to make a Daruma shaped gift card holder to go with the card. To do this, I enlarged the template for the Daruma body (with a window for the face) to be large enough to fit a gift card, and created a pocket by welding a blank mirror image to it for the back. "Make a Wish" sentiment was added using the print and cut function. Then I made an insert that would fit inside the Daruma "pocket" with the Daruma face printed on it, a pull tab, and tabs to hold a gift card.

I found it fun and challenging to create this Daruma pop up card and gift card holder.  I hope my sweet friend enjoyed it as much as I did putting this together!

Chimmy Birthday Card

Word is out that all seven members of the Korean Pop Boy Band, BTS will have finally completed their mandatory military service by June and fans worldwide are excited for their the return. I have a close friend who happens to be a huge fan of BTS, so I thought it would be fun to put together a "BT21" themed card for her birthday.

In case you were wondering, "BT21" is a line of  cute cartoon characters created by each member of BTS representing themselves. The paper pieced dog wearing the yellow hoodie in the card is "Chimmy", created by my friend's fave band member, Jimin. 

Happily there are a lot of coloring book style images of  BT21 characters online. I found an image of Chimmy running that I liked and converted into a cutfile for my card. I decided to add him to a rectangular pop up card so I could create a fun scene. The cutting files for the rainbow, balloons, cake, and happy birthday sentiment are older ones I had created for cards in the past.

Computer generated sentiment was added to the back side of the rectangle card base.

Here's what the rectangle pop up card looks like flattened and ready to go into an envelope.

For a matching gift card holder, I created a cut file using a peeking Chimmy image and welded on  a rounded rectangle shape, adding half circle shapes to hold a gift card. 

Had fun creating the Chimmy cutting files for this card and gift card holder. And looking forward to hearing more big hits from BTS soon!

Fan Pop Up Birthday Collage

 This is the birthday card and matching gift card holder I recently created for a sweet friend . 

I decorated the front of my card using my favorite "Club Blooms" floral dies from Spellbinders. Happy Birthday sentiment was cut from gold foil board using Hello Bluebird's "Happy Birthday Words" die. The white shadow layer behind the words was created in Make the Cut design program. I also added various sized clear flatback dew drop embellishments for fun.

On the inside, I was happy to finally have the chance to use the Karen Burniston "Photo Fan Pop Up" die to add some interactive excitement to the card. This was my first time using this mechanism and I really liked that it was so easy to install. It's a lot easier than the photo collage pop up mechanism I've used previously because there are very few, if any, catch points to worry about as the photos are added.

Since my friend's daughter posts family photos regularly on Instagram, I chose the photos I wanted to use for this card and had them printed as collage size prints at Walgreens, as suggested by Karen Burniston.

The matching gift card holder was kept simple, decorated with a happy birthday sentiment die cut from gold foil board using Lawn Fawn Happy Birthday Border die and more flowers cut from Spellbinders Club Bloom dies.

I really enjoyed using my new "Photo Fan Pop Up" die and am looking forward to using it often to create more fun pop up cards.