Puppy Twist Flower Pop Up Card

Knowing how much my niece loves her Malshi (Maltese + Shih Tzu), I wanted to surprise her with a card that featured a likeness of her dog for her birthday.

I found some adorable digital doggie clipart created by artist Yuki of Elytra Studio on Etsy and just had to pick up a set. I thought one of the images looked just like my niece's dog, so I created a cut file, cut her from white cardstock, then used Copics to color her up to look like my niece's beloved "Kinako".

For the card front, I used a cut file for an open scallop circle to frame the dog and embellished with flowers die cut using Spellbinders "Be Bold Blooms" die set. Happy Birthday sentiment was hot foiled and cut with Spellbinders "Birthday Unboxing Glimmer" set. I also randomly glued on a few flatback clear dewdrops to add some sparkle.

 

Inside, I used Karen Burniston's "Twist Flower Pop-Up" mechanism on a panel I created with another paper pieced dog and flowers. As the card is opened, this panel twists and rises up to the center of the card. The "Twist Flower Pop-Up" die set comes with large daisy dies to attach to the mechanism (thus the name "Flower Pop-Up"), but I'm finding it fun to use this mechanism to animate a lot more than just flowers.

To create a matching gift card holder, I enlarged the dog image and had her hold onto a little paper pieced envelope which opens up to reveal a gift card.

And finally, here's the photo of my niece's sweet little dog, "Kinako" which I used as inspiration to create her birthday card. Isn't she absolutely adorable?

Daruma Pop Up Card

For my sweet friend Lorna, who enjoys all things related to Japanese culture and tradition, I created this Daruma themed birthday card.
 

The inspiration for my card came from this super cute Daiso shopping tote decorated with images of many colorful Daruma dolls.

I especially loved the different whimsical faces of each daruma on the Daiso tote, so I scoured the internet in search of cute daruma faces. After finding a few, I print and cut them and used them to piece together several daruma in fun, bright colors. Cutting file for the Daruma doll bodies was created in Make the Cut Design program.

On the inside, I used Karen Burniston's Photo Fan Pop Up die set to install the mechanism for this fun Daruma pop up. 

The Fan Pop Up mechanism is made up of a half circle with six spokes, so I attached a Daruma doll to each spoke and three more onto the half circle. To hide the spokes, I attached three different sizes of cherry blossoms which  were die cut using the Cherry Blossoms Outline die from Wiki CAPS. Flower centers were punched from gold foil board using a Punch Bunch mini punch.

I decided to make a Daruma shaped gift card holder to go with the card. To do this, I enlarged the template for the Daruma body (with a window for the face) to be large enough to fit a gift card, and created a pocket by welding a blank mirror image to it for the back. "Make a Wish" sentiment was added using the print and cut function. Then I made an insert that would fit inside the Daruma "pocket" with the Daruma face printed on it, a pull tab, and tabs to hold a gift card.

I found it fun and challenging to create this Daruma pop up card and gift card holder.  I hope my sweet friend enjoyed it as much as I did putting this together!

Chimmy Birthday Card

Word is out that all seven members of the Korean Pop Boy Band, BTS will have finally completed their mandatory military service by June and fans worldwide are excited for their the return. I have a close friend who happens to be a huge fan of BTS, so I thought it would be fun to put together a "BT21" themed card for her birthday.

In case you were wondering, "BT21" is a line of  cute cartoon characters created by each member of BTS representing themselves. The paper pieced dog wearing the yellow hoodie in the card is "Chimmy", created by my friend's fave band member, Jimin. 

Happily there are a lot of coloring book style images of  BT21 characters online. I found an image of Chimmy running that I liked and converted into a cutfile for my card. I decided to add him to a rectangular pop up card so I could create a fun scene. The cutting files for the rainbow, balloons, cake, and happy birthday sentiment are older ones I had created for cards in the past.

Computer generated sentiment was added to the back side of the rectangle card base.

Here's what the rectangle pop up card looks like flattened and ready to go into an envelope.

For a matching gift card holder, I created a cut file using a peeking Chimmy image and welded on  a rounded rectangle shape, adding half circle shapes to hold a gift card. 

Had fun creating the Chimmy cutting files for this card and gift card holder. And looking forward to hearing more big hits from BTS soon!