Butterfly Stadium Wave Card

Cardmaking is always fun, but even more fun when you get to play with new tools, supplies, and even a new pop up card syle!

I finally had the chance to play with the Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil System that I received for Mothers Day and some butterfly dies that I had purchased a while back but never had a chance to use.

 The gold foiled "Happy Birthday" sentiment you see on the front of my card was one of my very first attempts while learning the Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil system. I used Spellbinders Be Bold Glimmer Sentiments Hot Foil Plate and die, and was happy that it was pretty quick and easy to create foiled sentiments and embellishments after watching a few video tutorials.

The intricate die cut butterflies I used to decorate the front and also inside my card were cut from Spellbinders Delicate Butterflies die set. I cut the wings from pearlescent cardstock, backed them with white glitter paper, and used gold foil for the bodies. The very tiny gold butterflies were cut from now retired  Memory Box Butterfly Delights die. I've always been fascinated by butterflies and I've collected quite a few different butterfly dies over the years so it's always a good thing when I get to put them to use.

On the inside, I added a fun cascading pop up to create this "Stadium Wave Card" using a video tutorial by Sam Calcott of  Mixed Up Craft found here.  I'm really wishing now that I had taken a video of the cascading movement of the the butterflies as this card is opened. Still photos really can't capture the "wow" factor of this card.

Here's a view from the side to show the accordion-like mechanism that creates all the fun movement for this card. Although it may appear complex, the mechanism  for this wave card is really just strips of folded cardstock attached to each other. For my card, I cut the strips for the mechanism from cardstock on which I had printed a digital paper design front and back, with the hope that might help it to blend into the background. I've recently seen that some creative crafters have used clear acetate instead of cardstock for the mechanism so the butterflies really appear to be floating inside the card. Next time I make this style of card I'm defintely going to have to try that too!

I used Karen Burniston's Slider Box die to create a matching gift card holder to go with the card. Karen Burniston's Bam Box die was used to make a little rubberband activated box to make the attached gift card pop up as the drawer of the box slides open. In theory it sounded like a great idea but I found out later from the recipient that the adhesive I used wasn't strong enough to keep the gift card attached to the Bam box so the gift card didn't pop up as I had hoped. Shucks! Back to the drawing board for a solution to make this work!