Simply Putt...

Hubby celebrated his birthday this weekend and I managed to come up with another golf themed card for him. Yay!
 

Kept the front of the card very simple. I used an old cut file I created a while back for the golf putter, and the shoes were a freebie svg file I picked up at SVG Cuts. Golfer's jeans were hand sketched to fit with the shoes, then traced in Make the Cut to create a cutfile. Happy Birthday sentiment was hot foiled and cut using Spellbinders "Be Bold Glimmer Sentiments" hot plate and die set.

I decided to create a Double Slider interactive card. As the tab on the right of the card is pulled out, the golf ball slides in the opposite direction to the left of the putter and appears to drop into the hole. I used a video tutorial on You Tube  by Karolyn Loncon of MFT Stamps as a guide for the construction of  the mechanism for this  Double Slider Loop card, found here. 

Slider cards have always been my nemesis because so many things can (and usually do) go wrong that prevent the slider mechanism from working smoothly. This time around, I did a bad job of cutting the channel for the ball to slide along, which caused the ball to get caught along the jagged edge. In an effort to avoid having to redo the entire front panel, I rubbed a candle along the rough edges of the cut line. The wax from the candle really worked to smooth it out and got my slider working smoothly... so happy! 

I attached the slider front to a top fold slimline sized card and added my sentiment together with some golf clip art on the inside of the card.

Hubby was very pleased with his interactive birthday golf card and even suggested an idea for his next... "next time, how about making the golf club swing?"!!!

Smarter Than The Average Bear!

Every once in awhile in between all the birthday and special occasion cards I make for family and friends, I like to make a "Just Because" card. Here's one I made recently to send our granddaughter when I learned she and her family were planning to go camping at "Jellystone Park".

I grew up watching cartoons of the "smarter than the average bear" Yogi and his sidekick BooBoo Bear who lived in Jellystone Park, stealing "pic-a-nic" baskets from unsuspecting campers. So I was amused to learn that there's a chain of camping recreational resort parks across the U.S. and Canada called Jellystone Park where familes can vacation at.

I was pretty sure our 6 year old granddaughter had never heard of Yogi Bear, so I decided to send her this card just for fun.

Pulling out the slider tab located on the bottom right side of the card makes Yogi Bear come out from hiding behind the tree and run to the left with his pic-a-nic basket!

Coloring page images of Yogi Bear found online were rendered into layered cutting files using Make the Cut Design program. I followed a video tutorial by Karolyn Loncon from My Favorite Things Stamps for the assembly of the Double Slider Loop mechanism that allows Yogi Bear to run to the left.

The slider panel was then adhered to a top folding card. Inside, I added a silly message and clip art of Yogi being chased by Ranger Smith. And as per her mom's request, I tried to keep all the words on the card to first grade emergent reader level so our granddaughter would be able to read it all by herself. 

Kokeshi Double Slider Card

I recently discovered that Lili of the Valley, an online stamp shop from UK, also has an Etsy Shop by the same name where they sell their line of digital stamps. I've always known Lili of the Valley to have some of the cutest stamp images so I was excited to be able to purchase them in digital format. I noticed they had some adorable Asian inspired stamps, and  picked up their Kokeshi Doll Set  knowing it would be perfect to use on a double slider birthday card I had in mind for a sweet friend.

Still photos never seem to do slider style cards justice, so hubby agreed to help me capture some of the sllider fun of this card on video.

Pull out on the tab on the bottom right side of the card and the two kokeshi girl images slide from behind the sakura border and towards each other to meet in the center! To create this fun interactive slider, I followed MFT's very talented Karolyn Loncon's video tutorial for a double slider card found here. Karolyn uses MFT Die-namics dies to make it easier to create the mechanism to make this slider card work but you could also cut the slider pieces and create the slots with an x-acto blade.

Kokeshi girl digital images were printed onto white cardstock and colored with Copic markers. The sakura images that came with the set were rendered into a cutting file in Make the Cut, cut from pearlescent and glitter cardstock, then paper pieced to be a border. The blue wave background panel is from a digital paper set designed by Gradient Fox also on Etsy. I used Memo and Ballerina true type fonts for the sentiments and cut the front and back panels and the sentiment using the Print and Cut function.

I enjoyed putting this card together and was especially pleased that I was able to assemble and have the double slider mechanism working smoothly fairly easily. Looking forward to trying another double slider card like this one soon!

Celebrate with Pochacco and Hello Kitty

I decided to make yet another Pochacco themed birthday card for my very special friend Kris who loves Pochacco. We both enjoy interactive cards so I thought I would try making a slider style card similar to the ones shared by the very talented Anita Chang on Instagram.

Happily, I was somehow able to convince hubby once again to help me do this very short video to show this slider card in action. Sometimes words and still photos just aren't enough!

As the tab on the right side of the card is pulled,

... little Pochacco and Hello Kitty appear from behind the cake with Happy Birthday wishes!

I followed  this video tutorial by Karolyn  Loncon of My Favorite Things for creating an interactive double slider card to make this card. The only difference being that I adhered my sliding elements (Pochacco and Hello Kitty) to the center of the slider at the start position so they would slide away from each other rather than toward each other as in Karolyn's card.
After everything for my card was assembled and was glued in place, I discovered that Pochacco and Hello Kitty weren't sliding out from behind the cake smoothly because they kept getting tangled when they slid back behind the cake. To remedy this I had to adhere a panel of clear acetate to the top of the sliding mechanism to separate Pochacco and Hello Kitty. Difficult to see from the still photos, but Hello Kitty is in front of the acetate panel and Pochacco is behind the acetate.

Pochacco, Hello Kitty and the tiered birthday cake are coloring book images which were rendered into cutting files using Make the Cut design program. Everything was cut from white and black cardstock and colored with Copic markers. "Celebrate" cut file was also created in Make the Cut using Ballerina true type font. I added Stickles glitter to the frosting and candles for a festive bling.

Here's the back of the card where I added the birthday sentiment. Putting this card together was quite a learning experience. I'm not entirely pleased that I had to add the panel of acetate between the two sliding elements, but unfortunately that was the only solution I could think of to get the card to work smoothly. Paper pieced images tend to have more catch points than stamped images so maybe next time around I'll experiment with stamped images instead.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year! Today celebrates the first day of the Lunar New Year of the Rat. Sharing the cookie boxes, card, and lai see (red envelopes) I made for the New Year.

For my cookie boxes, I used a cut file from the Lori Whitlock store to put together a dozen of these gable boxes. Since I needed the boxes to be large enough to hold a dozen cookies, I enlarged the template to create a box that was 7-1/2" x 5", with a depth of 2-1/4".

To embellish the box, I used a Chinese paper cut image of a rat and the Chinese character for rat,  rendered into a cutting files using Make the Cut design program. Both were cut from gold foil and red and gold Stardream papers. Spellbinders Chinese Traditional Fence die from the Destination China Collection was used to cut gold glitter cardstock for the Chinese design behind the rat medallion.

Baked up 3 batches of almond cookies this year to fill a dozen boxes to share with friends and family.

Ever since our granddaughter was born, I've been trying to make a tradition of sending her a handmade Chinese New Year card each year in hopes that it might help her learn and appreciate some of her personal heritage.

I used gold foil and glitter cardstocks with the Chinese Traditional Fence and Chinese Coin Window dies from Spellbinders for the front of this card.  A cut file was created for the Chinese character, "fu" for good fortune, cut from gold foil and placed in the coin window. I backed the coin with red foil and placed it onto a red glitter background. Cut file for the cut corner label comes from the Lori Whitlock store and I used CK Calligraphy font.

Inspired once again by the amazing Anita Chang, I made this into a fun interactive double slider card. Pull the tab on the right side of the card...

... and a little white rat slides out from behind the panel!

Cute little rat was cut using Cricut Create A Critter cartridge. Her outfit was handcut from text weight Stardream and her bows and mandarin buttons were cut using embellishment files from SVG Cutting Files Warrior Princess.

I enlarged the corner cut label file I had used on the front of the card to create a panel for the inside to add our New Years sentiment. 

The last thing I did was to make a few Year of the Rat red envelopes for our granddaughter and a few friends. 

Inspired once again by the kawaii Year of the Rat nengajo images found on many Japanese websites, I made a cut file for my rat by welding basic shapes together in Make the Cut design program. I used the same "good fortune" character I had created earlier for the New Year card for the Rat's medallion.

I really enjoyed putting all these Year of the Rat goodies together, just wish I had more time to make more!

Thank you for stopping by, and best wishes to everyone for a New Year filled with good fortune and good health.

Thanksgiving Turkey Double Slider Card

Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving came late this year, which turned out to be a good thing since it gave me a little extra time to put together a card to send to our granddaughter. Although I'm not accustomed to making Thanksgiving cards, I promised myself when she was born that I would make an honest effort to try and make and send cards to our her on  special holidays, especially since she lives an ocean away and we aren't able to celebrate in person with her.

I found a lot of cute Thanksgiving themed cutting files over at Cuddly Cute Designs and chose to use the "Pilgrim Cuties" paper piecing file for the front of my card. All the pieces were cut from white and black cardstock and colored in with Copic markers. For the background, I used distress oxide inks applied with cosmetic brushes and temporary stencils cut from Lawn Fawn puffy cloud and stitched hillside border dies. 

Then, inspired as always by all the fun interactive double slider cards designed and shared by the talented Anita Chang on Instagram, I decided I wanted to try one too.

Pull the tab located on the bottom right hand side of the card and a turkey slides into view from behind the little Pilgrim boy and girl. I'm hoping our granddaughter will get a kick out of this! 
Instructional video by Christy Gets Crafty on how to create this type of double slider card using MFT DieNamic's Double Slider Slot die may be viewed here.

On the inside, I used Doodlebug's Flea Market Tree border from the Lori Whitlock Shop to add some color.
Best wishes to everyone for an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday today, whether you decide to spend it eating and relaxing with family, watching football, or going shopping. Me? I'll see 'ya at the mall!