Thanksgiving Turkey Double Slider Card

Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving came late this year, which turned out to be a good thing since it gave me a little extra time to put together a card to send to our granddaughter. Although I'm not accustomed to making Thanksgiving cards, I promised myself when she was born that I would make an honest effort to try and make and send cards to our her on  special holidays, especially since she lives an ocean away and we aren't able to celebrate in person with her.

I found a lot of cute Thanksgiving themed cutting files over at Cuddly Cute Designs and chose to use the "Pilgrim Cuties" paper piecing file for the front of my card. All the pieces were cut from white and black cardstock and colored in with Copic markers. For the background, I used distress oxide inks applied with cosmetic brushes and temporary stencils cut from Lawn Fawn puffy cloud and stitched hillside border dies. 

Then, inspired as always by all the fun interactive double slider cards designed and shared by the talented Anita Chang on Instagram, I decided I wanted to try one too.

Pull the tab located on the bottom right hand side of the card and a turkey slides into view from behind the little Pilgrim boy and girl. I'm hoping our granddaughter will get a kick out of this! 
Instructional video by Christy Gets Crafty on how to create this type of double slider card using MFT DieNamic's Double Slider Slot die may be viewed here.

On the inside, I used Doodlebug's Flea Market Tree border from the Lori Whitlock Shop to add some color.
Best wishes to everyone for an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday today, whether you decide to spend it eating and relaxing with family, watching football, or going shopping. Me? I'll see 'ya at the mall!

Llama Accordion Card

For as long as I can remember, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for llamas. As a child and even as a mom, I can recall spending most of our time at the zoo, not at the lion or elephant cages, but at the barnyard display where we could pet and feed the llamas. So happy llamas seem to be the big trend now and I simply couldn't resist making a llama themed accordion style card for my daughter this year.

 I used the Pop Up Box Card Valentine Llama cutting file from the Lori Whitlock store to put together the three paper pieced llamas on this card. I enlarged the first llama for the "head shot" on the front of the card and gave her a crown of posies and paper punched leaves. The folded Happy Birthday banner is a print and cut file I created by welding shapes together and using LD Charming font.

The second and third llamas were sized to fit the oval accordion panels and I placed a birthday cake and presents on their backs to give them a festive look. The birthday cake was cut from Taylored Expressions Little Bits Cake and Stand die, and the presents are just rectangle and square shapes cut in various sizes with heart and circle shapes for the bows.

I added an additional accordion panel to the card in between the first and second llamas so I'd have a place for my sentiment.

All the panels of this accordion style card were cut using Elizabeth Crafts' Pop It Ups Accordion Oval Card die designed by Karen Burniston. I used some old Doodlebug papers from my stash to cover the outer panels and pink glitter card stock for the ovals... so girly, right?

Although it's been awhile since I've made accordion cards, still enjoy putting them together, especially for the wow factor in the finished card. Tossing around the idea of maybe doing an accordion style for the holidays... we'll see!

Gamer's "Retro" Birthday Card

I really had fun putting together this Super Mario Bros. themed card for my son in law's birthday this year. I was inspired by the super cool and clever Super Mario Bros.wiper style card created by the very talented Frances Byrne of Stamp Owl's Studio blog earlier this year... I knew right away I would be CASEing her card to try and make one for my son in law. 

Since I don't own the neat Mario Bros. stamps that Frances used on her card, I decided to use paper pieced images for my card. I used downloadable svgs from ImmaCutYou Studios on Etsy to make cutting files for my paper pieced Mario game characters and elements. Nearly all the pieces were cut from white cardstock and colored in with Copic markers.

I started with the background sky for my card by blending Tim Holtz distress oxide inks (Broken Glass, Salty Ocean) over cloud shaped stencils. Hillside border was cut using Lawn Fawn's Stitched Hillside border die and inked with Mowed Lawn distress oxide ink. Then to make my card interactive, I used one of the wiper mechanisms from Mama Elephant's Wiper Surprise die.

When the right and left side of the card are pulled simultaneously...

... Mario jumps up from behind the grassy hillside!

On the backside I found and printed out a background scene from the original Super Mario game and backed it onto a piece of black cardstock  for a place to add my sentiment.

Then just for fun, I put together a little box made to look like the "mystery box" in the Super Mario game and filled it with lots of chocolate gold coins and even some REAL money... ha, ha!