Cute As A Bug diorama card

This card ended up being so easy…once I figured out which score lines to fold which way (mountain or valley) and what areas to glue!  And with the darling DSP called Cute As A Bug, it turned out absolutely adorable! 

First, the card base is 4.25”x11” and scored at .5”,  1”, 5.25”, 5.5”, 5.75”, 10” and 10.5”. That’s a ton of little score lines so close together! The score line at 5.5” is the folding line for your card. The widest panel is the focal panel - adhere your DSP here  (in my case I used a red and white checkered DSP). Next, die cut your window opening (I used a circle die). The DSP you choose to peek through this circle gets adhered inside next.

Now you’re ready to actually glue the front and back of the card base together but ONLY along two thin scored strips. Fold the card at the 5.5” score line — this is your card’s left edge. Apply glue along the thin scored area along the 5.5” score line, gluing the front and back of the card together. Do the same along the thin scored area on the right edge of the card. Add your strips of DSP along each of the folded panels as desired and decorate with fussy cut images from the DSP and / or sentiments.Much eaasier done than described in writing! Hope you try this sweet design…

Fall for Toile Paper Pumpkin alternate design

Stampin’UP! put last year’s Paper Pumpkin called Fall For Toile on sale so I had to grab it! I love the included stamp set as it has the iconic fall images of pumpkins, acorn and a flock of birds (it’s migration season where I live!) I made two of the cards as designed (after cutting the card bases in two and saving one for later use). But decided that the third one needed to be an alternate design. I loved the simplicity of Laura Seki’s design (a demonstrator from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) where she die cut a large circle out of the dark brown checkered card base and added the cluster of leaves in the center. So I ran with that and added a few of my own modifications to finalize the design and came up with this:

First I cut the card base into two and trimmed it down further to 4x5.25”.  I die cut a large stitched circle in the center (saved for a future use!) then adhered it to a Very Vanilla card base. Then I positioned the cluster of leaves from the kit in the center of the open area and tucked two of the brown foil leaves in two open spaces between the leaves. Once those were glued on, I glued only the CENTER of the leaf cluster down then added several dimensional foam pieces under each leaf near the outside of the cluster to raise the leaf edges while keeping it flat in the center. Then I added two embellishments: the leaf from the Paper Pumpkin Fall add-on and the acorn cluster from the Label Me Grateful Dies set. I shortened the ribbon from the kit and added the “THANKFUL” sentiment (I stamped, heat embossed and punched one of the sentiments using the Banners Punch). I was quite happy with the final result and loved the little additions of the added leaf and acorns die cuts. I hope you like this too. Stay tuned for additional alternates for this kit…

Halloween Boo Shutter Card

I love Pinterest as it has so many ideas and tutorials for fun card designs. I’ve seen the shutter card many times over the years but somehow, never got around to making one….until now! I wanted an interactive card for some young ones and thought it would be perfect for a Halloween card. I followed Lisa Curcio’s tutorial and have linked it here: https://lisasstampstudio.com/2020/07/how-to-make-interactive-card-like-a-boss.html

And here is the card closed:

And as it’s opened up slightly:

A little more:

And more:

And here it is fully opened:

Can’t you imagine a child opening and closing it repeatedly? I sure can and in fact, even I did several times after I made the card!! lol Hoping you enjoyed watching the card open in the photos. Thanks for stopping by....

Oh a tip: the BOO sentiment is a plastic die cut, which sometimes had enough "surface" to catch on the shutter mechanism. So I glued a strip of dimensional (double sided foam sticker) to cardstock and cut it out-- I only wanted one surface of the foam to be sticky. Then I attached the dimensional strip to the card base just about (but also out of sight) of the shutter mechanism as it opens and closes. I added this above the "BOO" and another below it. Then all I had to do was to carefully place the shutter pieces so that they were flush with the printed card stock so that the foam strip kept the shutters elevated off of the card base and hence, not catching on the "BOO". If you make a card and just stamp a sentiment or have an otherwise totally flat focal, you won't have to worry about it catching. 

Happy Halloween!