Thanksgiving Hugs

This is the card I created to send to our granddaughter together with her Thanksgiving "care package" this year.
 

I used Marianne Design's Squirrel die together with Karen Burniston's Autumn Elements and word dies to decorate the front of the card.

On the inside of the card, I added a pull down panel...

As the panel is pulled downwards, a little raccoon pops up from inside the pumpkin.

I used one of my favorite Karen Burniston pop up die sets, the "Parcel Pop Up" to add this surprise pop up element to my card. Click on the video to watch this fun pop up in action.

The cutting file for the pumpkin was created in Make the Cut Design program. Squirrel and Raccoon were cut and pieced together using dies from Marianne Designs. I used MFT's Grassy Edges die for the grass border, and Karen Burniston's Autumn Elements and word dies for the leaves and sentiment.

I added our sentiment to the left side of the card as a "print and cut" using a fancy label svg created in Make the Cut. Being that we live an ocean apart from our granddaughter means we aren't able to spend most holidays together but we hope she'll remember we have her in our hearts and thoughts when she receives this card.

I also quickly put together these treat holder boxes to share with friends we had lunch with earlier this month. Using a  svg cutfile from Cuddly Cute Designs called "Wishbone Bear" I pieced together the Pilgrim Bear to add to the front of the boxes.

The template for the treat holder is a simple one; I just made a box that would fit the bottom of the box of Moose Munch Popcorn, making the front and side panels tall enough to join together at the top to tie together with a bow.

Every Thanksgiving, I look forward to receiving a wonderful handmade card from my dear friend Bev. This year her card was this fun Triple Cube Pop Up in beautiful autumnal colors.

Here's what the card looks like from the top...

... and a view of the back. I really love the cute printed paper and layers of matching cardstock Bev chose to create her card, how she used colorful leaves and squash to embellish the front, and especially the way she placed her sentiment inside the two front cubes to pop into view as the card was unfolded.

Thank you for stopping by today. Hope you have an enjoyable Thanksgiving day.

Spooky Treats!

I have one last Halloween themed post for the year to share the fun goodies I received from my crafty friends.

I absolutely fell in love with this adorable friendly ghost treat box created by sweet friend, Kris! This guy is tall, standing 9 inches high from his cute lime green shoes to the tip of his fancy top hat! The hat is the lid, and look at all the candy he was filled with! Kris used the "Happy Ghost" svg cutfile from Simply Crafty SVGs for this fun box.

The next two treat holders were designed by my super talented friend, Lorna who really knocked it outta the graveyard with her creativity. She decorated black condiment cups to make the cutest treat holders. This skeleton popping his skull off  with the tag "Oops! There Goes My Head" is the best!

This second condiment cup filled with candy was decorated with a fun tombstone and adorable  paper pieced Tokidoki spooky love couple, Adios and Ciao Ciao.

I received my very first Halloween card ever this year. My crafty friend, Bev knows how much I love interactive cards so she put together this fun card to send to me...

Had to include a short video of this card since stills could never capture the fun action of this card!

As the card is opened, Count Dracula rises and sits up in his coffin! The original idea and template for this card comes from Awesome SVGs. If you'd like to try to recreate this card, the designer, Omar shares the free SVG template and You Tube video tutorial to make this on his website. 

A special thanks to my sweet friends for generously sharing their wonderful creative talents with me for a fun Halloween!

Shaker Coffins and Skull Boxes

Really wanted to try some sort of shaker treat boxes for Halloween this year so I came up with these coffin shaped boxes with a shaker lid.

The svg cut file of the template for the coffin box was a freebie from Birds Cards that I had downloaded just prior to the closing of the the site earlier this month. I edited the original cut file by adding a shaker window to the lid and creating a backing insert for the window with a depth of 1/8 inch to hold the sequins and sprinkles.

Front of the box was decorated with a spider and "Boo!" die cut from an old Cuttlebug Halloween die. Cutting files for the spider web and trick or treating Kuromi in her skeleton costume were created in Make the Cut Design Program.

I put together a dozen of these boxes to share with friends. Didn't have a chance to bake this year so instead, coffin boxes were filled with my favorite Japanese rolled cookies.

While looking for ideas for Halloween treat boxes, I came across these skull  favor boxes designed by "Little Paper Racoon" on Etsy. I have been wanting to make skull shaped boxes for Halloween for a very long time, so I was very excited to purchase the template for this project.

The original template for this box was in PDF format, intended to be printed and then cut by hand. Since I preferred to have it cut on my Silhouette, I converted it into a svg cut file and made a few changes. Instead of the separate top fitting lid of the original box, I decided to edit the template by welding the lid piece to the main skull piece so it would cut as a single piece and left the flap on the top of the skull unglued as a flip style lid. Nose and eye sockets were changed to be cut instead of printed on the skull and teeth were changed to be a print and cut.

Then just for fun I added bows with spiders, skull eye patches, rhinestone catch lights in the eye sockets, and lots of Stickles glitter glue.

Back of the skull looked so bare so I added a sentiment.

Thankfully these skull boxes were pretty quick to assemble once they were cut so I was able to get a dozen done in time for fright night. 

Frank and Polah are getting dressed up to attend the Monster Mash tonight! Have a safe and fun Halloween!

Pumpkin Sliceform Pop Up

Halloween is just a few days away and I'm still frantically trying to get some treat boxes finished!  But I'm excited to share this pumpkin shaped sliceform pop up card that we mailed to our granddaughter last week as part of her Halloween surprise package.
      

This sliceform pop up is designed similar to the golf sliceform pop up sphere I shared in my previous post. However, this pumpkin pop up is only about 4.5 inches tall and 4.75 inches wide; so approximately half the size of the golf pop up. It also has a lot less layers, required only 2-1/2 sheets of 12 x 12 cardstock, and was much easier to assemble.

Instead of using all white cardstock as I had for the golf sliceform pop up, I decided to use Halloween colors for the layers like the sample photo I saw on the designer's web page, M3D Art Craft by Tran Thi Muoi. But after finishing the assembly, I realized the colored cardstock seemed to make everything look darker and it was difficult to see the details of the scene inside the pumpkin. I tried lining the edges of all the cuts inside the pumpkin with Stickles glitter glue which seemed to help a little, but not enough.

To provide the needed amount of light to illuminate the pumpkin pop up, I decided to create a paper lamp base using a free template provided on the 3D Fancy website. I placed a string of 20 LED Fairy Lights inside the base, placed the pumpkin on top of it, and was very pleased that everything got a lot  brighter.

The sliceform pumpkin flattened nicely to fit in an envelope but since the lamp base is not collapsible it had to be placed in a separate box. I included a sheet with simple instructions so our 7 year old granddaughter can easily set it up for display.

I'm finding these sliceform pop ups are challenging and fun to cut and assemble. They are available in different shapes and sizes and I'm looking forward to giving a few of these a try.

Golfer Sliceform Sphere Pop Up

Excited to share a new type of paper craft I've recently started to explore.I've always been intrigued with sliceform style cards and paper crafts, so when I saw cutting templates to assemble pop up sliceform crafts being offered for sale on Etsy, I couldn't resist giving one a try. Since I'm always looking for new ideas for golf themed cards to make for hubby this was perfect to use as his birthday card/gift.

At first I was afraid the design on this would be too intricate to cut on my Silhouette Cameo but it actually cut quite well. There are many layers to this sliceform orb; it took 26 sheets of 8.5 x 11 cardstock to make this!

I watched the video tutorial on the assembly and it looked like it would be pretty easy. But I won't lie, assembling all the various layers to create this was a bit challenging.  The first 6 layers were easy but I began to struggle from layer 7. My layers started to tear, I got frustrated, and was ready to give up! It was a good thing I decided to message the designer for help. She gave the helpful tips I needed and told me not to give up. I tried what she suggested and was able to finish the assembly without any more problems. I'm still puzzled as to why she doesn't add those tips to her assembly video.

The finished pop up is about 8 inches round, which I thought was a nice size. The photo you see here is a side view shot taken from the top.

This is the LED wooden display base that I purchased from Amazon to provide the lighting which gives the beautiful lighted glow you see inside the orb. These are reasonably priced at about $6 each and are available in many different sizes.

One of the neatest things about these sliceform orbs are how they fold flat. With all the layers it took to make this one, it flattened to a thickness of about one fourth inch.

I really liked how this sliceform pop up turned out. Now that I understand how to put these together, I'm pretty certain I will start trying different designs of this type of papercraft. If you think you'd like to give this a try as well, you can see all of Xuyen Nguyen's designs at Xuyen Craft. Hubby was really happy with his golf shadow box orb and now has it displayed on his desk

A Pair of Twist Panel Pop Up Birthday Cards

 October is by far the busiest month for me when it comes to making birthday cards. This year, I decided to do duplicates to alleviate some of the stress of being short on time and creativity.

I started by using Spellbinders "Lacey Circles" die set to cut and glue three layers together for each frame. Flowers and foliage placed around the frame were cut from pearlescent papers with Spellbinders "Be Bold Blooms" and "Mini Blooms and Sprigs" die sets. Fishtail sentiment banner was foiled and cut using "More Sentiments" Glimmer hot plate from Spellbinders.

Little teddy bear peeking through the frame was cut and pieced together using Marjorie Ann Designs' "Franklin Heal the World" svg cut file.

Inside the card, I installed a "Twist Panel Pop Up" or "Pop Up Accordion Panel" mechanism for a fun surprise. An accordion folded "Happy Birthday" banner pops forward and twists open as the card is opened.

There are many tutorials that can be found on the web for this type of pop up mechanism by searching "Twist and Pop Up Card". The template and tutorial I use for mine are from Kevin Devine found here.

I used the same "Franklin Heal the World"  cutting file to cut and piece together the mirror image sitting teddy bears. Alphas for "Happy Birthday" were cut using Arial font and the banner was made by arranging the bears with the letters and having Make the Cut design program create and cut a shadow layer of them together. Teddy bears and letters were then adhered to the shadow layer and folded accordion style to fit onto the pop up mechanism.

Last step was to add my sentiment box, some die cut balloons and flowers, and a little bit of sparkle to the letters with glitter glue. 

Oven Pop Up Birthday

We have a very dear friend who enjoys baking and always spoils us with delicious fresh from her oven goodies. So for her birthday this year, I made a kitchen themed card.                                                          I used "Happy Birthday word die" from Hello Bluebird for the sentiment on the front of the card as well as Karen Burniston "Baking Charms" dies for the mixing bowl and implements. Oval panels were cut on my Silhouette Cameo and I ran the smaller oval through The Paper Studio's "A2 Bricks" embossing folder. For the wood panel mat, I printed a photo of  a vinyl wood floor sample from an online flooring site.  I also used this for the kitchen flooring inside the card, and to die cut the wooden spoons and rolling pins used to decorate.                                                   

Inside the card, I used Karen Burniston's "Oven Pop Up" and "Oven Extras" die sets to add a fun pop up kitchen. Although this is a very simple and basic pop up mechanism that could be easily created without a die, I chose to purchase these die sets mostly because of all the tiny,  detailed and perfectly sized to fit extras included. 

Without a doubt, attempting to cut the tiny little gas burners, oven knobs and even the baking racks from metallic cardstock would have been a struggle on the Silhouette. It was so much easier to die cut them! I also loved how the oven door opens so you can get a peek inside to see what's baking . . . look, it's our favorite cranberry scones!

The cranberry scones our friend bakes are deliciously rich, buttery and to die for! Of course they had to be baking  in her oven! These were done as a print and cut.

I used a previously created cutfile for the bracket style label, "Hello Valentica" font, and more die cut kitchen utensils for the sentiment box.

For a gift, I pieced together a duplicate set of kitchen charms to decorate and embellish the top of this slider box.

As the drawer is pulled open to reveal the gift card inside, the embellished panel on top pops forward to an upright position. The svg cutfile for this fun pop up sliderbox was purchased from the Lori Whitlock Shop.  These boxes really make it fun to gift and receive gift cards.