Casino Style Birthday

When I learned my brother in law would be spending his birthday in Las Vegas, I knew I wanted to make him a Vegas themed card. 

I decorated the front of his card simply by gluing miniature playing cards together to create a great hand. The sentiment and shadow layers for both the sentiment and the cards were created in Make the Cut design program.

On the inside, I used Karen Burniston's House of Cards die set to add this huge, fun pop up. The large gold shadowed sentiment on the left was die cut using a MFT Stamps "Celebrate" word die.

 

This was my second time using the House of Cards die set and the assembly of this card went a whole lot smoother and easier than on my first try. I kept the design of my House of Cards to a simple 4 story structure using playing cards I had printed onto plain white 110 lb cardstock and everything came together very nicely. Looking forward to trying to build more architecturally challenging structures with this die set soon.

In keeping with the Vegas theme, I decorated this slider box with a print and cut image to look like a slot machine. Used glitter, foil and holographic papers on the panels to give the slider box the "bling bling" excitement I always feel whenever I walk into a casino on the Las Vegas strip.

As the drawer to the box is pulled open to reveal the the gift card inside, the front panel of the box pops up. Hope my brother in law enjoyed his gift and card as much as I had fun making them!

Lego Building Fun

When I saw Lego themed pop up cards being created and shared by crafters on "Karen Burniston's Pop Up Peeps" Facebook page, I immediately knew I wanted to make one too. Our son-in-law really enjoys collecting and building with Lego so I figured he'd get a kick out of a Lego themed card for his birthday.
 

Found lots of crafty inspiration for the design for the front of my Lego card online. It all seemed easy enough,  just square and rectangle shapes filled with circles, right? I thought it would also be fun to add some realistic dimension by stacking and gluing two circle shapes for each of the Lego pegs. However, I admit it became less fun once I realized how many circles needed to be cut, and how long it would take me to glue all those circles together!

On the inside, I used Karen Burniston's "House of Cards Pop Up" die to put together this huge pop up made to resemble a stack of Lego blocks.

Each of the blocks are made up of 4 panels notched together. The completed blocks are then attached as layers by inserting the tabs on the bottom of each block into the holes on top of the blocks below it. I admit I had to watch Karen Burniston's assembly video tutorial for this pop up set quite a few times before I finally got it right. In the end, I think all the added weight from the double layers of  circles which I had glued onto each side of the cubes may have been the reason I ran into assembly issues. 

At first my stack of blocks kept falling apart, so I heeded Karen's advice, reinforcing the connection points between the layers and that seems to have done the trick, making a much sturdier stack of bricks.  The finished card ended up being quite bulky and required 6 neodymium magnets to keep it closed.

The House of Cards Pop Up die definitely makes a fun,"wow-factor" card which can be assembled and stacked in many different configurations with as many layers as you like. Others have even built pop up castles inside their cards using this die set!

In keeping with the Lego theme, I made a Lego pop up drawer gift card holder to go with the card.

I decorated a slider drawer type box to match the front of my card, and the pop up cubes inside were also covered with rectangle and triangle shapes made to look like Lego blocks. These rubber band activated pop up cubes make giving gift cards so much fun.