Bridge Fold Birthday Card

While rummaging through my craft room in hopes of coming up with ideas  for a birthday card for my mother in law, I came across a very old Hero Arts wood mounted stamp set called "Asian Dolls". This set  (which was released by Hero Arts in 2009) was still in it's original packaging, never opened. I decided it was finally time to get these stamps inked up and put to use!

 

After being kept tightly shut in it's original packaging for over a decade seemed to have caused the foam backing on the stamps to wear down unevenly so I had to remove the stamps from their wood blocks and discard the foam backing. Luckily the red rubber had remained supple so I was actually able to get a pretty decent image using the Tim Holtz Stamp Platform. I chose two of the Chinese girl images for my card, using Copic markers to color them in.

I decided to make a bridge style card, using cardstock from Michael's Recollections "Cherry Blossom" Paper Pad for the back panels. Cherry blossom embellishments were fussy cut from cardstock from the same pad. Bridge die is from Lala Land Crafts. Border die cuts in the background are from Amy Designs' Chinese Landscape and Lala Land's Asian Landscape dies.

I added our sentiment to the backside of the card using the print and cut function and added a oval shadow layer cut in gold foil.

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!

Baby Shark 1st Birthday Card

I'm sure by now everyone who has a toddler in their life is familiar with the Baby Shark song gone viral by South Korean children's educational entertainment company, Pink Fong. Thought it would be a cute choice for making a birthday card for a special little boy in our family who recently celebrated his first birthday.

I picked up clip art images of Baby Shark with his family and ocean friends from Digital Custom Chris at Etsy and created paper piecing cut files for each using Make the Cut design program.

Decided to use a Bridge Fold or U-fold card style to create an ocean scene for Baby Shark and company.

View from the top shows the strut inside onto which Baby Shark is attached with a piece of clear acetate. I got the chance to play and practice ink blending with Tim Holtz distress inks and makeup foundation brushes again to create the ocean background. Adding random splashes of water droplets onto the cardstock after blending the inks resulted in the fun splotchy water marks.

Added our birthday wish for little Elijah on the backside of the Bridge Fold card.

And finally, here's the card folded flat to fit into an envelope. Had lots of fun putting this card together, while humming the Baby Shark song the whole time of course!

Evie's First Birthday

In keeping with her birthday theme of "Love you to the moon and back", this is the card I made to celebrate our granddaughter's first birthday. I wanted to include a moon and rocket ship and decided a Bridge Fold card might be the easiest way to depict what I had in mind.

For the rocket ship, I actually used the very same image I had originally created to make the photo booth in my previous post. Only this time, instead of enlarging it, I shrunk the image to about 1-1/2 inches in length and cut it from pretty DCWV glitter cardstock. I used Lawn Fawn's Puffy Cloud  die and Core'dinations white glitter cardstock for the layers of stitched cloud borders, and tied fishing line to the struts inside the card to suspend the glittery and pearly little stars in the sky.

Cloud labels with our sentiments were print and cut on the Silhouette and backed with metallic gold foil board. The bottom cloud is the same one we used for headers on the birthday cooky favors in my last post.

Here's the view from the top which shows the struts on the top and bottom inside the card onto which the fishing line was attached.

Birthday sentiments were added to the back of the card. Although she's probably still much too young to ever remember her first birthday celebration, hopefully photos together with this card will help her parents tell her all about it when she's older.

Kokeshi Bridge Fold Card

This is the Bridge Fold card I put together for my very, very special friend Lorna who celebrated her birthday earlier this year.

Knowing that Lorna likes kokeshis, I wanted to do an Asian themed card with a paper pieced kokeshi doll. I found a kawaii kokeshi clipart set by Doodles First on Etsy and used Make the Cut design program to render the clipart into a cutting file.

Lala Land die was used to cut the bridge, and background scenic border was cut using Signature Dies' Kyoto Skyscape. Cherry Blossom printed cardstock is from Michaels' Recollections line called "Cherry Blossoms".

View from the top shows how the kokeshi was attached to a strut running inside the "box" of this bridge card.

I added a pocket on the back of the card so I could slip in a gift card and attached my sentiment panel to it. These Bridge Fold cards are so simple to put together and are the perfect choice when you want to create a special card but don't have a lot of time.

For A Deer Friend

One of my "deer-est" friends celebrates her birthday early January. I'm usually going crazy working on New Years projects around that time, so up till now I've been writing "Happy Birthday" in her Christmas card...how terrible is that, right? Well now that I'm retired, I figured I should have more time, so no more excuses!  But as fate would have it, I fell behind and barely had time to make a decent card for my dear friend. Luckily, I came across the "Bridge Fold" or "U-Fold" Card.... and learned a super quick and easy card to put together!

I used Cricut Create A Critter cartridge for the cute deer and butterflies, and the tree is a svg cutfile from Doodlebug's Kitten Smitten.

With this view from the top you can see that this is very simply a gatefold card with a long strip adhered to the "gates". A strut is added inside where I glued the deer and a clear acetate strip for the flying butterfly. I kept my card super simple because I was in such a hurry to get it done, but there are some very beautiful, elegant and intricate Bridge Fold cards created by many talented crafters posted on the internet.

On the backside, I added my sentiment to a pocket so I'd have a place to slide in a gift card.

Here's the card flattened, ready to slide into an A6 size envelope. The beauty of this card is that it's super easy to alter the size of the card by changing the height of the card and the depth of the side folds to fit any size envelope you might have on hand.

Beary Special Valentines

I decided to make heart shaped faceted boxes for my valentines this year. 

These multi-sided, self closing faceted boxes have always intrigued me. I was happy to find a freebie template created by Petrina Burman and shared on her blog, The Walking Mombie. The original template for this box fits on a 8.5 x 11 sheet of cardstock, but since I wanted my box to be larger (to fit more candies!)  I enlarged it to fit onto a 12 x 12 sheet of cardstock.

The cute paper pieced valentine panda is from Marjorie Ann Designs' "Panda Love" . The really nice thing about the paper piecings from Marjorie Ann Designs is that she includes a blackout silhouette piece with her files which makes it so much easier when it comes to assembling all the tiny pieces together. Also included are clipart, making it possible to do an even easier print and  cut. For my pandas, I decided I didn't want to have to struggle with cutting and piecing panda's mouth together so I printed his mouth and had the Silhouette simply cut his muzzle. I used digital paper from Jazzy Pattern's "Romantic Adventure" to fill the faceted panel pieces and cut them on the Silhouette. Put together a dozen of these panda valentines and filled them with chocolates for sharing with special friends.

Only had time to make one Valentines Card this year...and guess who it was for! Been seeing a lot of Bridge Fold or U - Fold cards on the web recently so I decided to give one a try for our granddaughter's First Valentines Day card.

I love that this just may be the easiest pop up type card I've ever made. It's sort of like a simple gatefold card with a strip of cardstock running from one end to the other and with a strut (similar to those pop up box cards) running behind it. There are also many fancier versions that have an extra flap to create a countertop in the center, but I wanted to keep this card as simple as possible.

Cupid Bear and X-O-X-O border paper piecing file comes from Cuddly Cute Designs, "Cupid Bears".

Here's a shot from the top where you can see the strut on the inside to which cupid bear was attached with a strip of clear acetate, so it would look like he was flying.

I added our sentiment to the backside, and this card easily folds down to the left or right side to slide into an A6 size envelope.
Wishing everyone a wonderful Valentines Day... don't forget to tell those who are close to your heart how special they are!