Love You To The Moon

Hubby and I celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary earlier this month and this is the card I made to let him know how much I  still love him!

For the focal point of this card, I used a coloring book image of our favorite Disney couple that I had been saving for years with the hope of one day using for an anniversary card. Finally was able to start early enough this year to spend the time to work on it, using Make the Cut to render the image into a cutting file. I already knew I wanted to use this to make a Surprise Pop Up Slider card similar to the one I made earlier this year for my daughter and son in law's anniversary posted here.

Pulling up on the tab at the top of the card pulls the frame and the panel below it up...

...and reveals the sentiment underneath.

You can find the video tutorial for this fun interactive card by Beate Johns over at Splitcoast Stampers. Once you understand the basic construction of this card, you can easily alter the size to fit your own preference.

Since I wanted to get the "floating effect", I replaced the pop up panel on this card with a simple open frame and hung Mickey and Minnie from it using fishing line.

One of the main reasons I chose to do this card style is because I had also saved a backside view of this coloring book image which I also rendered into a cutfile. Unfortunately as it turned out, the front and back sides didn't match up as I had hoped, so I ended up having to fudge it and hand cut much of the backside to fit. LOL, it's a good thing this card was for my non-crafty hubby who probably never noticed!

One last thing I did just for fun was to twist Mickey and Minnie around a few times before putting the card in it's envelope. I thought it was sorta cool to see Mickey and Minnie spin around in the frame as hubby pulled the tab to open his card.

Right on Course

We celebrated hubby's birthday last weekend and this is the card I made for him. Hubby likes to get golf themed cards, but it's getting harder and harder to come up with something new. Been seeing a lot of pins lately on Pinterest of a new twist on the Z fold card... the Double Z fold, or a Z-fold Pop Up card...and decided to give it a go.

Here's what the card looks like when it's opened. I was especially in awe of the Z-fold Pop Up cards created and posted by Bronwyn Eastley on her blog, "Addinktive Designs". Bronwyn adds yet another twist to this card by adhering struts to the z fold inside the card, similar to the struts on the ever popular Card in a Box type card. Her Z-fold Pop Up cards are beautifully intiricate and full of little details...definitely go check them out for some amazing inspiration.

Here's a top view of the card where you can see I added Snoopy and background trees to the struts. The actual construction of the base card is really very simple, I used a video tutorial by France Martin of Frenchie Stamps for the measurements of the base card and went from there. The neat thing about this card is you can change the folding points of the z fold and the pop up strip to get a different look.  Changing the width of the pop up strip as well as moving it higher or lower on the card also changes the effect.

For my golf themed card, I used Cricut's Everyday Paper Dolls cartridge for the golf cart. Snoopy, the golf bag and trees are cutting files created in Make the Cut using coloring book images found on the internet. A Dienamics border die was used for the grass and the putting green and flag were handcut.

Had lots of fun learning how to put together this new card style, though it did take me quite a long time trying to decide where to place each design element on the card. Didn't realize until I was adhering all the pieces onto the card... Snoopy, the golf cart, the trees and the putting green... that the exact placement of each piece makes a huge difference on the total effect of this card. Found this to be a little frustrating, but intriguing enough to make me want to continue playing and experimenting with this new card style.

Gift Card Holder Ideas from Special Friends

If you're like me, and especially with the holidays coming up quickly, I'm always on the lookout for fresh new ideas for presenting gift cards. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I recently got these two more very cool ideas from crafty friends.

Okay, all you Hello Kitty fans out there...how CUTE is this?!!! This super kawaii Hello Kitty gift card holder was created by my new creative crafty pal, Dale. Dale emailed me after I had posted the Starbucks teddy bear gift card holder I made last month, and in less than a weeks time, I received this adorable creation in the mail from her!

Untucking kitty's arms from the heart...

Unfolds the card to reveal a pocket for the gift card. I was so excited and happy to receive this, especially since I had mentioned that I wanted to give this card a try using Hello Kitty. Dale used a Hello Kitty Sizzix Bigz die to cut out and piece together her Hello Kitty head...really love how this turned out, Dale!

This second gift card holder was shared as a make and take project during a recent craft club meeting by my always amazingly creative and inspiring buddy, Kris.

This gift card holder is kept neatly closed by a tab tucked into a slit on the front...

Open the card and surprise...a gift card pops up from the center! Totally love the surprise element to this gift card holder. Still haven't had the chance to figure out how this works, but hopefully will soon! Many thanks to Dale and Kris for fueling my creative mojo!

Growing Something Special

This is the card I made to send to my daughter and son in law when they recently called us with the joyous news that hubby and I are going to be grandparents! I had been wanting to do a card with Wall-E and Eve for them for the longest time, and this seemed like the perfect occasion.

Thank goodness for the incredibly talented Krafty Nook and all the wonderful Disney fan art svg files she so generously shares on her site! The mere thought of having to create a cutting file for Wall-E and all his tiny pieces gives me a rash...but happily Krafty Nook had already created one that I could use. The only thing I had to do was to create a cut file for the precious little plant in the boot. This I did using Make the Cut to render a coloring book image into a cut file. All the pieces for Wall-E, Eve, and the plant in the boot were cut from white cardstock and I used Copic pens to color them up.

A Punch Bunch mini punch was used to cut the stars, and together with Stickles glitter and a white gel pen I was able to create the starry backgrounds. "Congratulations" was cut from DCWV glitter cardstock using a metal die from Avery Elle's Sentimental set.

The cutting file for the arced sentiment on the top of the card, "Growing Something Special" was created using true type font Charming Bold and the Bezier Warp function in Make the Cut.

I decided to use one of my all time favorite card styles, the Free Standing Pop Up Card to showcase Wall-E and Eve. You can find a step by step tutorial by Mary Jo and a video tutorial by Beate Johns  here at Splitcoast Stampers. The only thing I did differently was to change the sliding panel into a tri-fold one. If you decide to do this, don't forget to cut the slit in the base wider to accommodate the the extra bulk of the tri-fold.

Here's a view of the backside of the card where I added our sentiment.

Definitely the coolest part about this card is how it folds flat to fit in an envelope for mailing!

After folding in the side panels, the slider slides into the base of the card...

...and here it is completely closed flat and ready to be put into an envelope.

I had so much fun putting this card together! Just love it when a card comes out looking just the way I had imagined in my head. 

Tsum Tsum First Aid Kits

For my craft club share this year I decided to keep it simple by decorating some first aid kits with Tsum Tsum characters. I made twelve different ones using cutfiles I created in Make the Cut using images found on the web.

These mini first aid kits are J & J First Aid To Go kits which are quite inexpensive and can be found in almost any drugstore. The boxes are about 3 x 4" in size and are filled with bandaids. gauze and cleansing wipes. The nice thing about these little boxes is that you could remove the first aid stuff and fill them candies or even use them as a cute gift card holder.

I used colorful washi tapes to cover the lids on these boxes, then mounted each of the paper pieced Tsum Tsums onto the lids with foam tape.

Once I got started, it didn't take too long to put these together. Cut all the pieces out on white cardstock and colored everything with Copic pens while they were still on the cutting mat. A lot quicker than having to hunt for all the different colored papers and cutting individually. Finished two dozen of these; one set for sharing with the ladies in my craft club and the second to donate to my mom's senior citizen club for their annual fund raising craft fair.
Whew! So glad to have this finished...because now, it's officially CRUNCH TIME! All the holidays are just around the corner and way too many birthdays coming up in the next 3 months...YIKES!

Teddy Bear Gift Card Holder

I needed to make a quickie birthday gift card holder for a very special friend so I decided to use the same cutfile I created recently for the panda gift card holder here. But this time I switched out the panda head with a teddy bear head from Cuddly Cute Designs' Bear With Roses cutting file.

I also changed the heart that panda was holding to a take out coffee cup, from Marjorie Ann Design's Morning Coffee cutting file. The cup sleeve was created by using the print and cut function in the Make the Cut program.

The base card (teddy's body) was created by welding together oval and rectangle shapes in Make the Cut. I used a double layer of thin strips of foam tape to mount the cup onto the teddy allowing just enough space to tuck his hands underneath to keep the card closed.

Untucking teddy's arms from under the cup and the top of the card from under his chin opens the card with a place to add a sentiment and a pocket for the gift card. Here I used Elizabeth Craft Design's Birthday die and added a tag cut using a Sizzix framlits set by Stephanie Barnard.

  

Love that this comes together so quick and easy. Looking forward to playing around with this a few more times by switching out the heads again...hmmm...maybe next time I'll try Hello Kitty!

A Birthday Shaker Card for Mom

Decided to try another floating shaker card, this time for my mother in law's birthday which we celebrated this weekend. I used my Silhouette to cut an octagonal window and frame for my shaker this time.

I added Marci with Lantern digital stamp from Lala Land Crafts to the front of the shaker window; colored her with Copics and paper pieced her outfit with washi paper. Inside the shaker I added red and gold sequins, beads and glitter.

The Asian style corners and holder for the Happy Birthday sentiment are cutfiles I created a while back by welding together squares in Make the Cut program.

The plum blossom background with the pagoda and bridge scene that shows through shaker window on the front of the card are actually on the inside of the card.

I then adhered the scene to an octagon shaped card...

So I'd have a place to add our birthday sentiment on the inside.

Really starting to enjoy making shaker cards and looking forward to making more. But first I'll definitely need to work on collecting some pretty colored sequins and beads to add to them...any suggestions on where I should start?