Sweet Sixteen

My niece turned Sweet 16 this year, and for her card I finally tried my very first waterfall type card. I know these type of cards have been around for a long time, but the thought of all the pieces to cut and assemble always kept me away. As it turned out, it really wasn't too difficult to put together at all and actually, it was kinda fun, especially with all the cute critters to choose from in the Create A Critter cartridge! For my card, I used a tutorial by my super talented & creative friend, Jen Young which you can find posted on her blog, Pieces of Me.

I changed the size of the card and panels to be a little larger (3"x3") than the original just so I'd have an easier time cutting and assembling my critters. I also cut the first top panel longer than the rest so it would completely hide all the panels underneath and allow me space to add a sentiment to the front of the card.

Then by increasing the length of the sliding strip to 12"and adding an extra scoreline at 5", I was able to add an additional panel to my card.

With the additional and larger panels, the overall size of the card turned out to be 7" tall and 4-1/4" wide. To avoid having to increase the width of the card by too much, I decided to staple the holding strip onto my card instead of using brads. Then to conceal the staples, I glued on a piece of patterned paper the same size onto the holding strip.
All critter images (bear, owl, poodle, & cupcake) are from the Create A Critter cartridge. "16" was cut using the Sizzix Fun Serif number dies, and die cut alphas are Quickutz Mini Maggie. Square & scalloped square are Nestabilities, and the font for the sentiment is LD Miss Rose.
Had fun playing around with this and altering the original waterfall card. Recently, I saw another where the panels were ovals instead of squares! Gonna have to give that one a try too!