A New Pop-up Cake

I had quite a few birthday cards to do in December, which gave me a chance to play and experiment with different styles of cards. This is one I did for the daughter of one of dh's co-workers who celebrated her first birthday. The front of this card was done in Design Studio, welding letters from Mickey Font, Princess Hello Kitty from Hello Kitty Font, and the number 1 from Plantin Schoolbook. The grid/frame was created by welding squares and rectangle shapes from the George cartridge.
I used a matchbook type closure, embellished with a little lace (Martha Stewart doily edge punch) and a scalloped circle (SU scallop circle punch, SU Think Happy Thoughts stamp set, rhinestone flower from Photocraft) to keep it nicely closed.

And here's the surprise pop-up cake on the inside! Actually, I guess it's "half" a cake, but I thought it was so neat, I had to try this. Although I have seen this type of pop up cake card a few times in pop up instructional books, I didn't think I'd ever attempt one on my own, mostly because I am a total klutz with an exacto knife.

But not too long ago while blog surfing, I came across Linda Davis' blog, Just For Sharing, where she had posted her version of this pop up cake which she created with Inkscape and SCAL. Linda generously shares her scut and svg files for her creations on her blog, and I was excited to try this, knowing my Cricut would be doing the cutting instead of my exacto knife!

Just look at all the cuts on this cake! My cricut cut each one of those lines perfectly straight and in the right place. Such would not have been the case had I attempted to do this by hand. Thank you, Linda, you made this very intricate card so easy to do with your cut file! All I had to do was fold and decorate...

Ballerina Hello Kitty is from Hello Kitty Font cartridge, "happy birthday" and "allison" is from Opposites Attract, hearts & scalloped half circles are from George, and the number 1 from Plantin Schoolbook. Tiny flower cuts are from a sizzlit die and tiny ovals were cut using a Fiskars hand punch.

Had quite a bit of fun embellishing my half cake, but after it was done I thought it looked more like a stage than a cake! Oh well, maybe next time I should add some candles on it to make it look more like a cake.