DINO-RIFFIC Birthday

Our granddaughter is at that age now where she's finally starting to understand what birthdays are all about. Earlier this year she began asking when hers was and promptly proceeded to inform her mommy and daddy that she wanted a dinosaur cake for her birthday. Based on her request, they began planning a "3-Rex" (T-Rex) themed party to celebrate her 3rd birthday and so of course gramma had to comply with a dinosaur themed birthday card as well.

Wiper style cards are a fun interactive card for toddlers because of its element of surprise. When the right and left sides of the card are pulled simultaneously, a pink Pterodactyl flies up from behind the hillside.

The pink Pterodactyl was attached to a strip of clear acetate which I glued onto the wiper arm mechanism cut from Mama Elephant's Wiper Surprise die. Cloud background and green grassy hills were inked with Tim Holtz distress oxide inks applied with foundation brushes.

The cute and colorful paper pieced dinosaurs were created from SVG files I purchased on Etsy from seller Jojo and Bella. Oh, and since this was for a "3-Rex" party, I made sure  T-Rex was holding the number 3! Palm tree was cut from Cricut Create a Critter cartridge and cutting file for volcano was created in Make the Cut design program from a coloring book image. All paper piecings were cut from white cardstock and colored with Copics.

The dinosaur clipart bundle from Jojo and Bella also included jpeg, png, pdf, and eps format files too, making it easy to create and print a fun dinosaur scene on the back of the card where I added our birthday sentiment. Although we had hoped to celebrate our granddaughter's 3rd birthday in person, we ended up cancelling our flight due to Covid 19, and the "3-Rex" party turned into a drive-by parade party instead. That's okay, we don't regret our decision to stay safe ...we still had fun watching our granddaughter open her gifts via video chat; and her drive-by party parade is something she and her parents will likely remember and talk about for years to come.

Sharing Smiles

Today I'm sharing some of the fun and crafty projects that I've recently received from my sweet, thoughtful and talented friends.

My dear friend Bev surprised me on Mothers Day with this beautiful U-fold or Bridgefold style card. View from the top shows how she adhered the jar filled with layered paper pieced flowers and foilage onto the center strut inside to give the appearance of a shadowbox. Love, love the bright and cheery colors she used...so pretty!

This amazing Mothers Day surprise is from my multi talented friend, Lorna. Really love the sparkly  daisy dish scrubby she crocheted...almost too pretty to use! Lorna packaged her lovely scrubby together with a sweet treat in a cello bag sealed with some polka dot washi tape and a cute layered tag to match the scrubby.

Awww! Lorna also created this super kawaii Boys Day Totoro treat holder. I especially liked the intricate cuts on Totoro's brightly colored koinobori or flying carp...very festive!

Now this treat holder from Lorna is truly a sign of the times, right? She decorated this sleeve style treat holder with the most adorable peeking bunny wearing a face mask and filled it with a package of mini oreos; cuter than cute!

Here's a fun card that's a little unconventional, but sure to bring a smile from my sweet crafting buddy, Kris. For one thing, this definitely has to be the first toilet bowl card I've ever received!

Pulling down on the toilet paper of this Waterfall style card makes the toilet bowl lid flip open to show a mouse inside your toilet with a request... and pulling the toilet paper down further flips the toilet seat up! Hubby and I both got a good laugh from this fun card.
Special thanks to my thoughtful and caring friends who shared their crafty talents to lift my spirits and bring a little cheer during these unprecedented times of uncertainty. The good news is that we have significantly "flattened the curve" in our state and stay at home restrictions are slowly being eased. Please continue to stay safe, everyone!

Flowers for Mom

I was excited to finally use the Karen Burniston Flower Pot Pop Up die set that I purchased a while ago with the express intent of making our Mothers Day cards this year.

I had watched Karen Burniston's assembly tutorial video for this die more than half a dozen times so I felt pretty confident the pop up mechanism would come together fairly quickly. But as it turns out, I ended up spending way too much time going back and forth on the design elements of the card... what colors to use?...which patterned papers?...which flowers and leaves?....etc, etc... that I barely finished the cards in time.

I finally settled on my favorite pinks and decided to make cutting files to create my own version of a layered flower instead of using the daisy style layered flower dies that came included in the die set. Layered butterfly was cut from Cheery Lyn Designs Small Exotic Butterfly dies; and I used C.C. Designs Olive Branch, Stampin' Up Little Leaves Sizzlets, as well as the leaf branch included in the pop up die set to cut the leaves.

Here's the fun pop up flower pot inside the card.

 Difficult to see from the photos, but I layered a combination of glitter and pearlescent cardstocks on the flowers and butterfly for a touch of bling. Flatback pearls were used for the flower centers.

Although I suspect this pop up die mechanism was designed to be used in cards with a portrait orientation, I decided to change mine into a landscape oriented card at the last minute. I first assembled the flower pot and attached it to a doily I had cut on my Silhouette. I then made the mistake of  filling the pot with flowers and leaves before attaching the flower pot to the card base. Didn't realize until I finally secured the doily and pot to the card base that all my flowers were facing to the right of the card! So rather than removing the stems and recutting all the branches to rearrange the flowers, I decided to rotate the card to a landscape orientation.

  

 I tried to balance to awkward placement of flower pot by placing the sentiment boxes to the upper left and bottom right of the finished card.   

Here's a shot of the flower pot pop up from the top which show how the struts in the flower pot run perpendicular to each other. The funny thing is, although it was this feature that really attracted me into purchasing this pop up die, as you can see in the final card, I ended up using the only the struts that were parallel anyway. That's okay, I'm looking forward to spending more time playing with this die set and learning how to better use it to it to its full creative capacity.

Shiba Inu Meme Birthday Card

I put together this "Doge Meme" themed pop up birthday card for my niece who owns a Shiba Inu. Paper pieced Shiba Inu pups were created from cutting files created in Make the Cut design program. The double tiered birthday cake which peeks out the front window was cut from now retired Cottage Cutz Celebration Cake die.

As this card is opened, the panel with the birthday cake  pops forward and rocks to the right...

... to reveal another Shiba Inu pup underneath!

Love the fun pop up and rocking motion of this card created with Karen Burniston's Rockin' Rectangle Pop Up die! Assembling the mechanism for this interactive card was actually pretty simple, and the nice thing is that it's a generic mechanism that can be customized to each persons's creative imagination!

I'm not much into meme humor but I tried to use some of the same silly captions I saw on many of the Doge memes I came across online and printed them in pastel colors to give my card a kind of  whimsical, humorous and cutesy feel. Hoping this card brought a little smile to our sweet niece who had to spend her birthday sheltering in place far away from home.