Your Friendship Means the World

Today I'm sharing a Surprise Sliding Pop Up style card I created for a sweet friend's birthday.   
 

I came across the cutest paper piecing svg cutfile set called "Heal the World" at Marjorie Ann Designs and knew right away I had to have it! After assembling my teddies sitting on the heart shaped globe, I mounted them onto a fancy label shape cut from a freebie svg shared by Images By Heather M.

I used Spellbinders "Birthday Unboxing" Glimmer foil plate and die to create the Happy Birthday sentiment with an offset shadow layer to add below the teddy bears.

Pulling on the tab at the top of the card pulls the bears and sentiment towards the top of the card and allows the label panel to stand upright.

As the teddies move to the top, the sentiment underneath is revealed.

And at the same time,  a gift card attached to the pull tab appears at the top of the card.

This pop up style card is a real oldie... the video tutorial on You Tube by Beate Johns from Splitcoast Stampers that I always refer back to relearn the steps to making this card was posted 13 years ago! But I still enjoy making this pop up because it's pretty easy to do, doesn't require specialty dies and never fails to bring a smile to its recipient.

Happy Cake Day

 I decided to give the Double Hinged Shutter Pop Up Card mechanism another try with this birthday card for my sister in law. She is mom to a sweet Shiba Inu, and being that I have collected so many Shiba Inu images, I wanted to use some of them on her card.

I love the double hinged movement of this pop up card! As the card is opened, the two images you see through the window on the front of the card pop forward and move apart to the sides to reveal the panel inside the card. 

As the two front panels move apart, the panels attached to them also become visible. A video tutorial and template by Tatyana Zhykova of Crazy Paper for this style card can be found here. For my card, I enlarged the size of the individual panels and the front window so I could get my paper piecings to fit more comfortably.

For the panels on the left side of the card, I used MFT's Cupcake and Sprinkles die for the cupcake and Karen Burniston's Big Birthday Charms set for the slice of cake. Word art "Happy Cake Day" was created in Make the Cut Design program using fonts "Memo" and "Hello Valentica".

Die cut presents and confetti on the right panel were cut using dies from Karen Burniston's Big Birthday Charms set and svg cutting files for the Shiba Inu images are from Creative Cat and Co. All panels were run through an embossing folder from Cuttlebug's Decorative Tile Set.

Truthfully, this was not a "quick and easy" card for me to put together. I think the biggest problem was caused by my wanting to increase the size of the panels and not realizing right away the effect it would have on the entire working mechanism. Paper engineer, I'm not! Finally got the hinges to work properly after several tweaks... I definitely need to practice on a few more cards before I'm feeling comfotable with this pop up.

Smarter Than The Average Bear!

Every once in awhile in between all the birthday and special occasion cards I make for family and friends, I like to make a "Just Because" card. Here's one I made recently to send our granddaughter when I learned she and her family were planning to go camping at "Jellystone Park".

I grew up watching cartoons of the "smarter than the average bear" Yogi and his sidekick BooBoo Bear who lived in Jellystone Park, stealing "pic-a-nic" baskets from unsuspecting campers. So I was amused to learn that there's a chain of camping recreational resort parks across the U.S. and Canada called Jellystone Park where familes can vacation at.

I was pretty sure our 6 year old granddaughter had never heard of Yogi Bear, so I decided to send her this card just for fun.

Pulling out the slider tab located on the bottom right side of the card makes Yogi Bear come out from hiding behind the tree and run to the left with his pic-a-nic basket!

Coloring page images of Yogi Bear found online were rendered into layered cutting files using Make the Cut Design program. I followed a video tutorial by Karolyn Loncon from My Favorite Things Stamps for the assembly of the Double Slider Loop mechanism that allows Yogi Bear to run to the left.

The slider panel was then adhered to a top folding card. Inside, I added a silly message and clip art of Yogi being chased by Ranger Smith. And as per her mom's request, I tried to keep all the words on the card to first grade emergent reader level so our granddaughter would be able to read it all by herself. 

Butterfly Stadium Wave Card

Cardmaking is always fun, but even more fun when you get to play with new tools, supplies, and even a new pop up card syle!

I finally had the chance to play with the Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil System that I received for Mothers Day and some butterfly dies that I had purchased a while back but never had a chance to use.

 The gold foiled "Happy Birthday" sentiment you see on the front of my card was one of my very first attempts while learning the Spellbinders Glimmer Hot Foil system. I used Spellbinders Be Bold Glimmer Sentiments Hot Foil Plate and die, and was happy that it was pretty quick and easy to create foiled sentiments and embellishments after watching a few video tutorials.

The intricate die cut butterflies I used to decorate the front and also inside my card were cut from Spellbinders Delicate Butterflies die set. I cut the wings from pearlescent cardstock, backed them with white glitter paper, and used gold foil for the bodies. The very tiny gold butterflies were cut from now retired  Memory Box Butterfly Delights die. I've always been fascinated by butterflies and I've collected quite a few different butterfly dies over the years so it's always a good thing when I get to put them to use.

On the inside, I added a fun cascading pop up to create this "Stadium Wave Card" using a video tutorial by Sam Calcott of  Mixed Up Craft found here.  I'm really wishing now that I had taken a video of the cascading movement of the the butterflies as this card is opened. Still photos really can't capture the "wow" factor of this card.

Here's a view from the side to show the accordion-like mechanism that creates all the fun movement for this card. Although it may appear complex, the mechanism  for this wave card is really just strips of folded cardstock attached to each other. For my card, I cut the strips for the mechanism from cardstock on which I had printed a digital paper design front and back, with the hope that might help it to blend into the background. I've recently seen that some creative crafters have used clear acetate instead of cardstock for the mechanism so the butterflies really appear to be floating inside the card. Next time I make this style of card I'm defintely going to have to try that too!

I used Karen Burniston's Slider Box die to create a matching gift card holder to go with the card. Karen Burniston's Bam Box die was used to make a little rubberband activated box to make the attached gift card pop up as the drawer of the box slides open. In theory it sounded like a great idea but I found out later from the recipient that the adhesive I used wasn't strong enough to keep the gift card attached to the Bam box so the gift card didn't pop up as I had hoped. Shucks! Back to the drawing board for a solution to make this work!

Photo Collage Wedding Card

We received a beautiful non traditional photo wedding invitation recently, and I couldn't resist creating a wedding a card for the couple that matched their invite.

The original wedding invitation we received was an elegantly understated double sided postcard style with photos of the couple and their names scribbled in a large handwritten font.  I decided to use the main photo from the invitation on the front of my card, placing it behind a heart shaped window frame. I then scanned the "word art" of the couple's names from the invitation, created a print and cut file for it, and welded it into the window. I kept with the same color scheme of the invitation, using dark navy blue, silver and grey.

On the inside, I used Karen Burniston's Photo Collage Pop Up die to create a fun, non-traditional, interactive wedding card. Hard to tell from the photos, but I used white glitter cardstock matted with silver foil board for the inside panels to give a subtle shimmer. Tiny heart embellishments were cut from silver glitter cardstock.

I had so much fun putting this wedding photo collage card together.  The recent trend of  couples sharing photos on their wedding websites and invitations makes it fun to create personalized cards such as this.

Hexagonal Pop Up Birthday Card

I have another Hexagonal Pop Up Card to share today. This one was created as a birthday card for a very sweet friend and decorated with partying teddy bears.
 

I used the Cottage Cutz Celebration Cake, Karen Burniston's Birthday Charms, Taylored Expressions' Celebration Confetti, and Craft Emporium's Stitched Balloons dies for the cake, balloons and confetti on the round panel in the center of this card. 

Paper pieced teddies were cut using Marjorie Ann Designs "Bently At The Beach" svg cutting file and the template for the Hexagonal Pop Up comes from the Lori Whitlock Shop. I tweaked the template to increase the size to be as large as I could fit onto a 12x12 Silhouette mat.

On the backside of the pop up I added another bear, more confetti, presents, and a banner. Tiny cupcake was cut using an old EK Success punch.

Although the original cutfile I had purchased for this Hexagonal Pop Up Card was Christmas themed, I really like that I was able to easily make it larger and change the embellishments to convert it into a birthday card.

Pushing down on the center round panel collapses the card so it can be slid into an envelope. Flattened, the card is nearly 1/4 inch in thickness so I made a petal style box envelope for it.  I added my sentiment to the trapezoid shaped panel which sits underneath the hexagonal base when the card is fully opened.

Then I used Cottage Cutz Tiered Cupcakes and Lawn Fawn Happy Birthday Border dies to make a matching gift card holder to enclose with the card.

Birthday Cruiser

One of my dearest long time friends enjoys traveling the world via cruise ships. When I learned she would be away on a cruise to Norway during her birthday, I thought it might be fun to do a travel themed birthday card for her.

I was happy to find several cute travel themed images in Doodlebug Designs "I Heart Travel" Collection that would be perfect for my card. I picked up the svg cutting files for the suitcase, passport and cruise ship images from this collection from the Lori Whitlock store. The world map on the front of the card was created as a print and cut file using an emoji image found on Emojipedia.

 Inspired by a  cruise ship box card I saw on the Simply Crafty SVGs website I wanted to try a sliceform version using the cute Doodlebug cruise ship image. 

I started by paper piecing the Doodlebug cruise ship in three separate layers, then sliding them into the sliceform base. I added  water waves to the first layer of the sliceform and a round background with clouds as the fifth last layer.

Views from the top and the side more clearly show the  five layers of the sliceform base. The svg cut file for the sliceform base template was also purchased from the Lori Whitlock Shop. Lori's step by step video tutorial makes this easy to assemble and I love that it can be customized as you please.

I really had fun putting this card together. It's always nice when an idea for a card that you imagined turns out just as you had hoped! Looking forward to trying out even more different ways to use this versatile sliceform base to make fun pop up cards.