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.

Bunnies Galore

Although Easter has come and gone, I have one last project: a card shared with friends at a crafting get together, and some Easter treats from my crafty friends to share today. 

As you can tell from the bulging card in the photo, this card turned out to be quite bulky so I decided to use a belly band which doubled as the decoration for the front of the card to keep it closed.

The pop up inside is made up of several layers of stepped and angled panels... lots of places to add lots of different embellishments! For my card I used lots of bunnies and chicks created using dies from Eline's Collectibles Baby Bunny and Chicken Family die sets. Also used dies from Karen Burniston Easter Charms and Spring Animals sets. Spellbinders Club Blooms die set was used to cut the flowers.

Views from the top and side show the three steps and six angles that make this pop up. The idea for this card comes from Sam Calcott of Mixed Up Crafters. She calls this a Pop Up Picture Panel Card and provides all the instructions and measurements needed to recreate this type of card on her You Tube Channel, here. 

As much as I liked the overall look of the pop up in this card, I didn't care too much for the resulting bulkiness. I'm sure that including so many embellishments, each being made up of several layers of cardstock added to the thickness. I did another test version of this card earlier using only flat  images and it turned out a lot flatter, so I may try a similar card again later. 

This was the only Easter card I made this year so it was mailed to our granddaughter. Hope she liked it!   

The Easter Bunny didn't stop at our home this year but happily I have crafty friends who shared their special creations for the holiday.

Sweet friend Kris made this adorable bunny treat holder filled with chocolates and wrapped it up in a very cool cellophane treat bag that's printed to look like a basket. So cute!

Dear Lorna cleverly origami folded a kawaii bunny basket and also this fancy Easter Egg holder with ears. She added cute bunny faces and wrapped each in cello bags with the cutest Easter toppers.

Thank you for stopping by for a visit today. Hope everyone was able to relax and enjoy Easter.

Bunny Treat Boxes

In addition to the cookie boxes I shared in my last post, I also had enough time to put together two kinds of bunny treat boxes to share with friends and family for Easter.

Inspired by all the very cute and creative Easter treat boxes posted online made by others, I put together this very simple bunny treat holder using the cut file for a bunny from a shaped Easter Bunny Card designed by Lori Whitlock.

By welding a mirror image of the bunny to the original with a rectangular gusset, and by adding two holes to the necks, I was able to place a small cello bag of treats in between and secure it in place with  ribbon tied into  a bow. And of course I couldn't forget to add a pompom for a cute bunny tail.

My second bunny treat box is not really a box, but a "Bunny Candy Wrap" from My Scrap Chick, which was originally designed to hold a 1.5 oz Hershey Chocolate Candy Bar.

I saw a post on their Facebook page where crafters had decreased the size of this template to hold smaller sized candy bars and decided to try changing the size too. Instead of a bar of chocolate, I wanted make mines to hold Yoku Moku Cigare cookies so I enlarged the template to be taller and deeper.

Bunny's bow tie serves as the belly band that keeps the wrap closed.

By enlarging the wrap, I was able to fit three cookies to into each holder. I especially liked that these came together very quickly because no gluing was required to create the wrap.                                         I had fun putting together 15 sets of the two Easter treat holders; the later Easter date gave me extra time to spend crafting. Did you know the day Easter's falls on each year depends on the moon cycle? It won't be for another 5 years for Easter to be late in April again. Next year Easter falls during the first week of April so I may not be as productive! Hopefully I'll remember to start planning early.

Easter Bakery Boxes

Made cookie boxes to share with a group of ladies with whom I've been friends with since high school. We try to get together once or twice a year to share a meal, touch bases and have fun reminiscing. There's a lot of conversations about travel, grandkids and especially, "Oh! Do you remember when...?"

With Easter just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to make Easter themed cookie boxes. I found a great tutorial for designing easy templates for hinged lid boxes of any size by Dr. Sonia SV on her blog "Cards and Crafts"  I created my template in Make the Cut to make boxes, 5" x 4.25" with a depth of 1.5" and a capacity to hold half a dozen medium sized cookies. I added an oval window on the lid to make them look like those bakery boxes that show the cookies inside.

I started decorating the box lid with a pastel plaid digital paper from the Happy Easter Digital Paper Pack by Printable-Cuttable-Creatables. Marianne Designs Eline's Chicken Family and Baby Bunnies Collectable dies were used to piece together the bunny and chick; and Happy Easter was die cut from Karen Burniston Easter Charms Set. The oval scalloped window frame was created in Make the Cut by welding circles around an oval shape.

Put together eight of these boxes, filled them with butter cookies and wrapped them in cello bags cinched with a tulle bow. These were fun to make! With Easter falling late in April this year, I had fun crafting to my heart's delight... more to come!

Kokeshi Rectangular Pop Up Card

If you're thinking this Rectangle Pop Up Card looks familiar, you're absolutely correct. It's almost  exactly the same as the card I posted last week except that I swapped Hello Kitty with a kokeshi doll for this card. 

I really liked the look of the Japanese torii gate with the cherry blossom tree behind it on last week's card but since this card would be for my mom (who isn't a big fan of Hello Kitty), I decided to use a paper pieced kokeshi doll image instead. 

The cutting file for the kokeshi doll was one I created for a card I put together last year from clip art purchased on Etsy. I really love the time saved when I can re-use older cut files to make new projects!

Since I also had the cutting files for the torii gate and cherry blossom tree already made and sized, cutting and assembling this card was fairly quick. The template for the rectangle pop up base was purchased from the Lori Whitlock store.

The front panel of this card was decorated with tiny punched sakura and a hot foiled and cut "Happy Birthday" using Simon Hurley's hot foil plate and die. Then I added a computer generated sentiment to the back panel.

Here's a view of the card collapsed and flattened, ready to slide into an envelope. This rectangle pop up card is quickly becoming one of my favorite style of card.