Oh My Gourd Birthday Card

Hello again and thank you for stopping by. I’ve got a fun, interactive card today that features a new stamp set from Gerda Steiner Designs called Gourds.  I would like to point out that I made my card say “It’s Your Birthday” on the inside, but it could just as easily have said “It’s Halloween”, as that sentiment is also in the set. Here’s a look at the card:

I started by stamping and copic colouring the adorable gourds and some of the ghosts from the Ghosts stamp set. I love that with both of these sets, there are so many images with different expressions to choose from.  I meant to write down the copic markers that I used but I think I was too excited to colour the images and forgot, so I do apologize. 

I started by stamping the inside sentiment onto my card base, as I usually forget to do this while it’s easy to do.  On the front of the card, I used a piece of cardstock from the Happy Haunting collection from Craft Consortium for the background, but you could just as easily create an ink blended background.  I added a little Nuvo shimmer pen to the moon and stars. The next step was to use the Swish ‘n Pop Pull Tab die set from Lawn Fawn to add the interactive element on this card. I used the die as instructed by Lawn Fawn with the one exception that I modified it to allow me to have two ghosts swing up. To do that, I added a small strip of packaging acetate with double sided tape, to the long die cut arm. Here’s a picture of what that looked like to help make it clearer. 

I played around a little with the placement of this second ghost to be sure he would start by being hidden behind the tree and end up above the gourds. It really just meant I needed to add some bulk to the tree so it would hide the second ghost. The tree is from an Elizabeth Craft Tree die set and I used a cloud die I had to cut out some of the bushy leaves. I also stamped and cut out a few extra ghost faces to have them hiding in the tree. 

To cover the interactive mechanism, I used a border die to cut out a black foreground for the gourds to sit on.  I stamped the sentiment along the bottom and white heat embossed it. Next, I used a double layer of foam tape to pop up this layer onto the card front, and was careful to make sure I didn’t interfere with the movement of the mechanism. Finally, I attached the tree, again making sure the ghosts were hidden in the starting position. I was able to add some double layers of foam tape in the top right hand corner to help support the tree without disrupting the mechanism. Then I glued the gourds in place. Finally, I die cut the pull tab cover from a scrap of the background cardstock and adhered it with glue to the pull tab.  Then all that was left to do was to play with the pull tab and watch the ghosts come out! 

Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope you’re having a happy, creative day! 

Little Reindeer Christmas Card

Hello again and welcome! I have a Christmas card to share today, and I do hope it’s not too early for you. It features the sweet “Little Reindeer” from Gerda Steiner Designs and he seems to have got himself a little tangled up in the Christmas lights. 

I coloured the reindeer image with copic markers and then added glossy accents to all the lights and ornaments before setting it aside to dry.  While it was drying, I created the background by die cutting two borders of snowflakes from a Crafters Companion die set called Joyful Snowflakes. Although you can’t see it in the photo, I spritzed these with some Sheer Shimmer craft spray in Sparkle.  I rotated one panel to go across the top of my card front and placed the other along the bottom edge.  I die cut 5 layers of the circular Paper Rose Geo Mandala from red cardstock and glued these together.  I used the same red cardstock for the sentiment, which is from the “Reindeer and a Tree” stamp set, and white heat embossed the sentiment.  Finally, I glued the mandala circle to the front of the card and popped the reindeer up on foam tape inside the circle. The sentiment is also on foam tape.  So another quick and simple card today!  

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you’re having a great day!