Flying Easel Birthday Card

Over a year has gone by since I my first attempt at a flying easel card...it turned out to be a disappointing fail and since then I never cared to try another. But a few weeks ago while trying to come up with ideas for a birthday card for my mother in law, I decided it was time to give the flying easel card a second chance.

For my "flying" element, I chose to use a trio of paper lanterns with my Happy Birthday sentiment printed on them. Font used here is Chow Mein ttf. Lanterns were cut using a cutfile created in Make the Cut by welding circles and rectangles together. Colored them using Copics and ran them through a crimper to add texture, then hung them to the frame on a length of embroidery thread.

I used a label shape from Monica's Creative Room to create the frame and cut the window. Monica creates and generously shares some of the most beautiful labels,tags, doilies and cards in digital format on her site. If you haven't been there yet, you'll definitely want to check it out! My stamped and colored image is sweet Mei Li from Sister Stamps.

For the stop on my easel card, I used Make the Cut to create a cutfile of an image of a Chinese style medallion with a stylized character for long life found through an image search on the web. 

And here's what the finished card looks like opened to its display position.

Must admit that I was much happier with this second attempt at the flying easel card. The actual construction of the card is fairly simple; but trying to figure out how to decorate it was the hardest part for me. Hoping more ideas will pop into my head soon so I can try this card again!

Domo Happy Birthday!

My dearest and long time friend Pat is a big fan of the mascot to Japan's NHK broadcasting company, Domo-kun, so I wanted to surprise her with some fun Domo-kun themed goodies for her birthday.

I started out by making this tiered chocolate birthday cake card. The cake, frosting and candles were created by welding basic shapes together in Make the Cut (MTC) and cut using my Silhouette Cameo. The little rosettes were cut from the Springtime Tea die from Cottage Cutz and lacey corners were cut using Spellbinders D-Lites Corner Flourish Two die. Used Stickles and a Marvy Glitter pen to add some fun shimmer and sparkle.

Made this into what I call an "open down" card...the top layer of frosting on the card keeps the card closed. Gently lifting up on this layer of frosting drops the front of the card down to open the card...

...and LOL, it's Domo-kun with frosting and candles on his head with a birthday wish!

The pop up Happy Birthday sentiment was created Make the Cut and Arial font.

And I had MTC trace an image found online to make a cutting file for Domo kun.

Next, I made this gift card holder to include as part of Pat's Domo kun themed birthday gift.

This is a trifold pop up type gift card holder inspired by Angie Leach on her blog, Too Cool Stamping. Comic Sans font was used to create the word "Celebrate" on the front of the card, and I found a cute Domo kun border online to add to the inside.

Then finally, as I was getting ready to wrap Pat's gift, I got a wild and crazy idea to decorate the box as well! I enlarged the Domo kun cutting file I had created for her giftcard to make a huge paper pieced Domo kun to add to the front of the gift box...LOL...so fun! Hoping Pat enjoyed her crazy Domo kun birthday surprise as much as I had fun putting this together!

Sister Stamps BFF Birthday Celebration

Coming up with a card worthy enough to send to my dear and super talented friend Patti of Creations By Patti for her birthday is always a huge challenge for me. After weeks of scouring the internet for something fresh and new, I finally decided to try the 3-D Scenery Card I saw over at Card Making Downloads. I think I must have watched the video tutorial for this 10 times or more before I finally figured out the mechanics on how this card is put together. LOL, and even then it took me over a week to come up with a working template!

The neat thing about this card is that it's kinda sorta like a box card, but it has a window with shutters that slide open to reveal a scene inside. For the base of my card, I used MTC and tried to create a Japanese style house with shoji doors that slide open. On the outside of the house I used an image of a tree with branches found on the internet and rendered it into a cutfile with MTC. Filled the branches with sakura cut using the Petite Sakuras die from Frantic Stamper. The coolest thing about this 3 x 3" thin metal die is that you can die cut 29 blossoms (4 different sizes) at one pass! I only needed to run it through my Big Shot 5 or 6 times to get enough of the smallest size blossom to fill my trees...great time saver!

On the inside, I used my favorite BFF stamp from Sister Stamps, colored them with Copics and paper pieced their kimonos with washi paper.

The "chochin" or hanging lanterns were created in MTC by welding circle and rectangle shapes together.  I used Copics to color them and ran them thru a crimper to add some fun texture before hanging them onto some black embroidery floss.

Here you can see how the stamped image was adhered to a slider inside the box.

Here's a top view of the card from the front...

...and a view from the back where I added a birthday sentiment. A little hard to see, but that tab towards the bottom of the box is the end of the slider that holds the stamped image on the inside.

Here's the card with the shoji doors closed...

Sliding the shoji panels into it's closed position also collapses the card so it can be put into an envelope. Had fun learning how to re-create this new style of card. Still need to play around and tweak the template for this card a bit more before I try another. Maybe then it can be my new favorite type of card to make!

Clothesline Baby Card

Had to come up with a quick card for a baby shower couple weeks ago for a friend at work who's expecting twin baby girls...and all I can say is, "Thank goodness for Pinterest!" Saw a lot of darling clothesline baby cards and hoped I might be able to put one together pretty quickly.

Found several pins for Onesies on Pinterest, and chose to use a freebie file offered over at the Quilling Patch. No time to spend on choosing colors so I just cut them in white and colored them in with Copics later when I had time to think. Trees are a cutting file from Miss Kate's Cuttables, and I created the picket fence in Make the Cut (MTC) by simply welding triangle and rectangle shapes together. Thin steel dies were used to cut the grassy border (DieNamics), birds (Memory Box), flowers (CheeryLyn), and fancy corners (Cuttlebug). Frame is another a freebie cutting file from Heather M. I cut a length of white of white embroidery floss and tied to the tree branches for the clothesline.

I decided to put my clothesline scene on a Surprise Pop Up Slider Card, instructions by Beate Johns can be found here. Pulling on the tulle bow at the top of the card slides the clothesline scene back and up, revealing a place underneath it for a message or sentiment.

This top view shows the slider attached to the tulle which pulls out with more room to add a message.

And here's a side view that shows how the front cover folds back and up in a way similar to an easel type card. Not at all fancy, but I think the sliding movement of this type of card always makes this a fun card to receive.

"Tsum Tsum"-ing by with Birthday Wishes

Do you Tsum Tsum? An intern at work introduced me to this adorable  mobile app game about a year ago, but I didn't start playing the game until recently. I still don't play it much, LOL, mostly because I don't understand the game...but it's fun to play just to see those adorable Tsum Tsums! Found out from my sister in law that you can even buy Tsum Tsum plushies at the Disney Store...apparently she has quite a collection of them herself!
That's when I decided I would try and make a Tsum Tsum themed card for her birthday.

After some quick internet searching I learned that the name "Tsum Tsum" comes from the Japanese word "tsumu" which means "to stack". With that in mind, I thought a stack of Tsum Tsums on a block style card might be kinda cute. The original block style cards that I've been making till now has blocks stacked in a "L" shape. But since I wanted to do something a little more pyramid shaped, I altered the original block card a bit in Make the Cut (MTC) and came up with this shape.

The cutting files for each of the paper pieced Tsum Tsum characters were also created in MTC from images found on the web. I cut all the pieces out of plain white or black cardstock and used Copics to color them. Lots faster than having to search through my cardstock stash for all the different colors needed!

Of course Mickey's at the top of the stack...

Here's Chip and Minnie on the second row...

And Eeyore, Donald and Tigger holding up the bottom of the stack!

I added the birthday sentiment (and Pooh!) to the back of the card. Shucks...I was in such a rush that I forgot to take of photo of the card folded flat, but it folds down the same as the original block style card. Had lots of fun putting this card together! Creating the cutfiles for each of the characters was a bit of a challenge but gave me lots of much needed practice with node editing in Make the Cut. Looking forward to adding more characters to my Tsum Tsum collection soon!

The Cat In the Hat Wants to Have Fun!

While searching the web for "Dr. Suess-isms" to use for the graduation card I posted last week, I came across a ton of super cute Dr. Seuss ideas that I couldn't resist pinning...and it's a good thing I did since my next card project just happened to be a baby's first birthday card for my cousin's grandson who was having a storybook themed party. What better story to use than everyone's favorite "Cat In The Hat"!

I was completely in awe and inspired by Odette Martinez' adorable Cat in the Hat party invite as well as Cheryl from Crack of Dawn Crafts and her clever "Thing Box" when creating this card. I used an image of The Cat in the Hat found on the web, rendered into a cutfile with MTC. The cutfile for the red crate box was also created in MTC by welding shapes together. And I really loved the blue chevron paper Odette used for her invites, but didn't have any on hand so had to improvise by making my own. Just connected little blue rectangles together in a repeating zig zag pattern in my Print Shop program...and voila!...faux chevron patterned paper!

Wanted to make this a fun interactive card that a child might enjoy so I chose to do a Covered Slider Card, using the template shared by Chia Wald of Chia's Rubber Stamp Art. I added an extra large pull up tab to the slider, easy enough for little fingers to grab a hold of...

...and pull up on. As the sentiment on the slider pulls up at the top of the card...

...up pops Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the red crate!

Had so much fun putting this card together, all the while reminiscing about how much I enjoyed reading the "classics" from Dr. Seuss out loud as a child and once again as an adult to my daughter growing up.

Graduation: Words of Wisdom from Dr. Seuss

Only had one graduation card to make this year, for the son of one of hubby's co-workers. Unfortunately, I was lost for any fresh new ideas, so I ended up going with my old favorite recessed window card again. For this card, I used a photo of the graduate's high school campus inside the recessed window and made a few subtle changes to the front cover panel of the grad card cutfile that I created a few years ago. Of course I updated the year to "2015" and changed the graduate's name (partially blocked out in photo for privacy). But this time around I also flipped the graduate image to face to the right and by moved the "Class Of" to the bottom of the window. I thought this helped the campus photo show up better and seemed to make the card look more "balanced".  And as you will see below, I completely changed the inside of the card...

Oh...and I also added a paper pieced hot air balloon onto the window to give a hint of what's inside the card...

Totally inspired by the graduation cards created by my blogging pal, Patti of Creations By Patti, I decided to add Four Step Pop Up insert for a fun surprise to the inside of this card.

Using the Four Step Card template designed and shared by Norma on her blog, From My Craft Room as a guide, I created a cutfile using Make The Cut (MTC) to fit inside my card.

The hot air balloms are a freebie cutfile from SVG Cuts, and clouds were cut using the Swirly Clouds die fromTaylored Expressions.

I added an excerpt from everyone's favorite Dr. Seuss...remember this one? It's from "Oh! The Places You'll Go!" A bit of childhood advice from Dr. Seuss that never grows old.

Here's the Four Step Pop Up Card from the top. I was happy that once I had the template for the insert cut, the assembly of this fun pop up card was quite easy. Pretty sure I'll be making this type of card again real soon.