Birthday Koi

Here's another card that I actually created a while back, but haven't had the chance to post till now due to the holidays. This recessed window card was for my Dad's birthday back in November. Seems I've been doing more recessed window cards than any other kind of card lately. I think it's mostly because the size, the orientation, and even the depth of the window is easy to alter without having to worry about too much math. Also because shadowboxes always intrigue me and I love how this type of card reminds me of a shadowbox.

Let me start off by saying that boy, oh boy I sure struggled with this card! Spent hours on the internet searching for an image of a koi suitable for rendering into a cutfile without much luck, and finally succumbed to the realization that I would have to try and draw my own. LOL, I'm by no means an artist and as a result my poor drawing produced a not so great cutfile. (About this time I was so wishing I had dished out the $10 plus shipping to buy that Cheery Lynn Designs Koi die, even though I knew would probably only use it once or twice). I cut my koi from white cardstock with the plan to do a white on white type of card...but somehow it ended up looking sort of eerie and spooky like ghost fish...Eeek! Had to take my orange Copics and color them in to give them some life!

I sandwiched the colored koi between 2 sheets of acetate and adhered the white frame with the swirls on the top of it. This was then glued to the front of the window opening, which made it look like the koi were swimming on the surface of the water.

On the inside, I used Solly Pop font, created by the amazing Kay of Clever Someday for the pop up birthday greeting. Kay shares her font on her blog, complete with detailed instructions on how to use it to create your own pop up word cards.  

Added one more koi cut to the inside, this time a multi-colored one, colored in with Copics as instructed by my friend Patti on her blog here. Water lily image is an internet find, rendered into a cutfile, colored with copics and added at the last minute in desperation to fill in the empty space. Label for sentiment is from the Cricut Elegant Edges cartridge. So relieved when this card was finally done! Sometimes things just don't turn out quite as you imagined...

 

Butterfly Kisses

I am so lovin' that there are so many companies coming out with thin metal dies! With such a large selection of beautiful and intricate dies to choose from, my collection has been steadily growing. LOL, now I just gotta start using them!
So for my sil's birthday card, I decided to finally try out my Cheery Lynn's small Exotic Butterflies set. This comes as a set of three different butterflies, as small as ones on a punch, but yet so delicate and detailed. Wanted to have their wings "pop" from the card without having to worry about them getting squished in an envelope so I put them in another recessed window card.

The flowering branch cut is from Cricut Home Decor cartridge. I used plain white cardstock to cut the flowers and branch, and colored them with Copics to give them a softer color. Butterflies were cut from Bazzill Bling Pearl cardstock, and inked with Tsukineko Brilliance inkpads to maintain their pearlescent sheen. For the background I used Bazzill Bling Diamond cardstock inked with Tim Holtz Distress Ink. Flatback pearls were used for the flower centers and butterflies. Martha Stewart Doily Lace edge punch was used for the bottom border, and font for the greeting is Tangerine.

On the inside, I played with the Solly Pop font again, this time to create a pop up birthday greeting.

Repeated the doily lace borders, added another flowering branch cut and used a label from Cricut Lacey Label cartridge for my sentiment.
Still have quite a few more thin dies that I've purchased but haven't had the time to play with...guess I'd better get crackin' so I won't feel too guilty about buying all the new ones I keep adding to my wishlist!

So Lucky To Have You As Our Dad!

Why is it always such a struggle to come up with creative ideas for Fathers Day cards? For my dad's card this year, I chose to go with a "Maneki Neko" or "Lucky Cat" theme. Last time I looked, he had  Maneki Neko images on his computer as a screensaver, so I'm guessing he likes them. I got the image for my card by doing a Google image search and used MTC to render it into a cutfile. Had my Silhouette Cameo do the cutting and was very pleased that I could capture alot of the thin outlines and details.

Decided to add my paper pieced kitty to a sliding pop up card...pulling on the little tab on the front of the card pulls the front panel up and allows kitty to pop foward. Thought dad would get a kick out of that! You can find the link to Kim Score's tutorial here. I used one of the patterned embossing folders from Cuttlebug's Asian bundle to emboss the back panel. Gold vellum & cardstock, and washi paper were used for the accents. Fonts used for the sentiments were Pharmacy, Tangerine and Leelawadee.

Dh's card was a little easier to come up with. I knew what I wanted it to look like, and happily the final result turned out pretty close to what I had imagined. Don't you love when that happens? My card for dh is another shadowbox card, similar to the graduation cards I made earlier.

Here's a view from the top which makes it easier to see the silhouettes more clearly. The golfer & golfcart silhouette images as well as the photo of the sunset were found by doing another Google image search. Did a quick edit of the silhouettes in Photoshop and had MTC render them into cutfiles and weld them into a window. First, I printed the sunset photo onto glossy photo paper and trimmed it to fit into the recessed window as the backdrop. Next,the silhouette layer was cut in black cardstock, adhered to clear acetate and placed over the front of the recessed window. For the final tan colored layer, I used MTC to create another cutfile of a "negative" layer of the golfer and cart by "un-welding" them from the window so that the golfer's foot and tires of the cart would cut into the edge of the window and be visible when layered onto the black layer.

The library label holding the sentiment was created using Design Studio and a cut from the Cricut Lacy Labels cartridge, then adhered to the front of the card with brass mini brads.

And on the inside, my first try at this type of word pop up. This is something I've been wanting to try for a very long time but have never had the time to sit down and learn how to do till now. Found the tutorials for this at my usual favorite go to place for pop-ups, Extreme Cards And Papercrafting. LOL, after reading thru four of Carol's very detailed tutorial lessons, I decided to take her advice and take the "cheater's way out" by using the pre-made tabbed font, Solly Pop Tab Font created by Kay and shared on site at Clever Someday. Still haven't completely figured this out yet...definitely will need to practice more!

Since the inside of my card was 12 inches long, the pop-up word insert ended up being too short for my card. Had to add the torn edge borders to the top and bottom as a quick fix for my boo-boo. That's when I also added the torn edge border to the front of the card so it would match. Not bad, I kind of liked the effect...sometimes boo-boos are good, I guess. For my sentiment, I used a cut from the Cricut Elegant Edges cartridge for the label, and Tangerine & Gabriola fonts.

We celebrated Fathers Day a day early since dh had plans to spend today on the golf course with his buddies. I knew I'd still be sleeping when he left this morning, so I brought home these adorable animal friends from Watanabe Bakery for him and my dad to enjoy for their breakfast. Meet Choco Bear, Apple Bunny and Cream Elephant...aren't they the cutest breads you ever saw? Not only are they cute, they're filled with the yummiest fillings...and you can't help but to smile as you eat them! There's also Sweet Bread Panda and Sweet Bean Turtle in the menagerie... I'll definitely need to bring them home next time!