Housewarming Surprise Pop Up Slider Card

 My cousin's daughter's family recently purchased their new "forever home" in Cali and this is the housewarming card I put together to send our congratulations.

While trying to decide on a style of house to use on my card, I thought it might be fun to create a  paper pieced house that looked like their new home.  I found photos of their house still posted on Zillow and came up with this house. I used basic shapes (squares, triangles) to create the house and roof lines together with some older files I created a few years ago for the windows, door and fence. Flowers and foliage for the flower boxes were cut from old mini punches from Punch Bunch. Unfortunately my paper pieced house didn't turn out looking too much like their new house after all, except maybe for the colors. But that's okay, it's still a kinda cute house anyway, lol.

I decided to make a Surprise Pop Up Slider style card so I could attach an envelope for a gift card onto the sliding mechanism. As the recipient pulls up on the tab at the top of the card, the house slides up to an upright position. and reveals the card sentiments.

This is one of my favorite interactive slider type cards to make because it doesn't take too long to put together and I think it has a pretty big "wow" factor. There are a lot of tutorials easily found on the internet to make this type of card but my favorite is by Beate Johns here.

Here's a view from the top of the card fully open which shows the slider on the top of the card where I attached the envelope for my gift card. It's a little hard to see since I die cut the envelope out of the same cloud patterned paper that I used for the background.

New Home Pop Up Card

 Our daughter and son in law moved into a new "forever home" in December, and although I was little late, I finally put a card together and sent it off to their new address.

As you may have already guessed, the mailbox on the front of the card was inspired by the Disney movie, "Up". I actually created a similar "Up" inspired mailbox for their housewarming card several years ago when they bought their first home. This time around, I enlarged the mailbox to be the focal point of the card front and added the dog paw and toddler handprint (additional family members!).

On the inside, I added this fun pop up house, which was inspired by a fabulous light up, snowy house Christmas card created by my dear friend Bev a few years ago. The tutorial and template to recreate Bev's amazing light up pop up card can be found here. I also discovered and learned a lot from a video tutorial by Duncan Birmingham, Tutorial 31 Pop Up House. If you are interested in pop ups as much as I am, he is on You Tube as "The Pop Up Channel" with video tutorials for many, many different kinds of pop ups. I really like that he takes the time to fully explain the mechanisms, how to construct them and how they work.

Through Duncan Birmingham's tutorial, I learned I could add things on to the pop up rectangle house structure as long as I stayed in the same line or parallel to that line. So on that premise I added the white picket fence and a pop up box on the backside of the house to attach the rainbow; and happily it worked! The one thing I just couldn't get quite right was the placement of the roof, which is not quite on correctly, but I after several tries at adjusting it, I gave up.

For the fence, windows and door, I used the same cutting files I originally created in Cricut Design Studio for the first housewarming card for my daughter back in 2012. I just downsized everything to fit this house. Cutting file for the tree is from Doodlebug's "Trees-Kitten Smitten" and rainbow is "Cute Rainbow" from Miss Kates Cuttables.  Flowers and leaves for the flowerboxes were punched using mini punches from Punch Bunch.

It took a lot of practice tries and experimenting, but I guess was pretty happy with how this pop up house card finally turned out, despite the issues with the placement of the roof.  However, I know I probably won't be attempting another pop up house like this anytime soon. The funniest thing is that just as I was getting ready to publish this post, I found out yesterday that Karen Burniston released 12 new die sets this month which includes dies to make a pop up house similar to this one. Darned.... if only I had waited a little longer before attempting to make this card! Now I might have to buy that die and eat my words about what I just wrote about not making anymore cards like this soon...!

Home Sweet Home

Dh and I just got back from a mini vacation visiting with our daughter and son in law at their new home in Cali. For our housewarming card to them, I thought it might be fun to try a house shaped card...
Been seeing so many different styles of very cool fence, door, and window dies in all different sizes being released by many of the companies specializing in thin dies lately. And seeing all the beautiful cards and paper crafts that others have created with them really made me want to run out and buy some too! Ahhh.....but at 10 - 15- 20 dollars per die...I just couldn't justify the spend. And how often would I actually use them? Better to try and create my own using the Cricut cartridges I already own and Design Studio or search for some images to trace in Make the Cut.



I admit it did take a lot longer to do than simply buying the ready made dies, but in the end I had cutting files that can be changed, re-sized or re-designed to fit my future needs.
It's difficult to see in the photo, but the roof on the house was actually inked and pieced as three separate scalloped, overlapping layers for some dimension.
The tiny flowers and leaves along the fence and in the window box were punched from a mini Punch Bunch blossom punch and Martha Stewart small branch punch.
For the front of the house, I used MTC and the Silhouette to design and cut the door. I used my Cricut, Cricut Design Studio and the George cartridge to create the windows and windowboxes; Picturesque cartridge for the picket fence and Wild Card cartridge for the mailbox.

Really had fun with the mailbox! I made a teensy-weensie envelope to fit inside the mailbox, and couldn't resist decorating the mailbox with some personalization. Does that look familiar? Yes! It was inspired by Carl and Ellie's painted mailbox from one of my daughter's favorite Pixar animated movies, "Up".

Open the card to the inside of the house and there you'll find a little white doggie perched on a comfy couch. (LOL, this is the little doggie my son in law has been promising to get once they got a place of their own...) The sign on the wall above the couch reads "Home Sweet Home".

Couch and doggie are Cottage Cutz dies and the sign was created in Design Studio.

 



As a final step, I decided to add an easel to the back of the card so it could easily stand up for display.

I inked up a Cuttlebug embossing folder (Tiny Mosaic) to try to create the look of a front sidewalk, and placed on it a charming old Irish saying framed with cuts using the Nestabilities Label Four die.
Whew! Took me quite a while to put this one together...but I have to admit I did have fun with it!