Easy Pop Up Card Making + Flower Glamorizing tutorial

Accordion Pop Up

          Hi friends Dr Sonia here sharing a project featuring 2 of my favorite crafty techniques: Interactive Card making and Handmade flowers.
          I fell in love with Pop Up Card making a couple of years back when I made a pop up card using a template fromRobert Sabuda. Since then I have experimented making all kind of pop up cards  and even designed a few of my own![ there are 71 pop up cards on my blog and 28 pop up card tutorials!]
          Pop up cards are so much fun to gift  yet we see so few handmade pop up cards !  Yes I agree they are not the easiest of cards to make ..they require precision and accuracy and exercising quite a bit of brain power!      But if you are making a card for a loved one /friend/ client I can guarantee...a well executed pop up card is sure to elicit a big "Wow!"

          Karen Burniston is an extremely talented pop up card "dies" designer  who has tackled all the difficulties of pop up card making and designed gorgeous dies to help crafters of all levels make fun interactive and crazily "wow" pop up cards with ease. I recently made a Pop Up Spinning Ball card using a pop up ball die she had designed for Sizzix and promptly became her fan so when Shalini asked me to chose a die for my DT project...I had to pick up the most attractive one of the lot...an awesome Oval Accordion Die Karen had designed for Elizabeth Craft designs.

Using this die you can make accordion cards with 2 to "n " number of panels and the most spectacular feature of the Karen's pop up accordion cards are that they also feature pop up up elements which swing out on opening the card!

           New crafters often ask for  guidance on which die designs and brands to buy. Regarding designs...its always a personal choice. In my  must have list are basic shapes such as ovals and circles. This particular die set has 6 dies including 4 nesting ovals ...one plain, one scalloped and 2 which can give cool faux stitched borders to your oval die cuts. There is also a tiny little heart which you can leave attached to the inner most oval to get a  perfectly centered heart aperture! So real value for money [ sorry if I sound like an advertisement but I have to applaud the sheer intelligence and forethought of the die designer!]

           And regarding brands , there are many brands which design super intricate dies [ Sue Wilson, Cheery Lynn  , Spellbinders , Tattered Lace etc] and though these dies are so beautiful they are sometimes a pain to cut..requiring metal plate adapters, several passes through your die cutting machine and poking and prising the die cut! With regards to sheer ease of use  ie the dies which cut smoothly and don't need several passes and much poking and pulling my top favorite brands are the Sizzix BigZ dies, Memory Box dies and now the Elizabeth Craft design dies.

I love the way the die cut ivory card stock and thick pattern paper easily ! To make this Accordion Pop Up card I layered the pattern paper on the thick card base [ thick cardstock is crucial to the success of this design].

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       Sharing something new I discovered...a lovely glue called Tom Bow [ yeah I have been going on and on about glue lately but this one is too good to not share...]..I thought it was just a regular white glue but the best thing about this one is apply just a little smear and it sticks so well and the bottle has a fine tip at one end and a broad tip at the other end-- such a useful feature when you want to switch between gluing delicate parts of a die cut or a curved area and covering large areas quickly.

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And coming back to the Pop up card..each die cut has a tab on one end and you can attach the tabs to create card and albums with multiple panels.

I trimmed a Spellbinders Majestic labels 25 to fit my card panels

And added a Spellbinders borderabilities curved border atop my panel to create a lacy arch. Its always fun to trim and mix and match your die cuts!

After decorating and accordion folding your card panels , comes the most fun part...creating the swinging pop up elements!

Karen's design is so cool...you just have to add a good adhesive [ best is red tacky tape] to the tab on one oval and stick it under the oval of the next card , a little twist and turn and your pop up album/ card is ready!

And the best thing about pop up cards/ albums is that they fold absolutely flat to mail!

Added a Cheery Lynn  lamp post and some shimmery handmade flowers on the panels of the card.

The silvery " Happy Birthday" was cut from glitter foam using Elizabeth Craft design dies.Though its such a delicate beautiful font it cut so easily even on foam!The white butterly was stamped on parchment and die cut and the golden butterflies all over the card are Cheery Lynn .

I hope you like the Pop Up Accordion card I made !

I love making flowers and sharing a few tips to easily and quickly glamorize your handmade flowers.

1. Punch/ handcut/ die cut flowers . I used the popular Spellbinders Rose creations die to cut flowers from cream colored handmade paper. If you regularly use white paper to make flowers, try using off white , cream or yellow paper as it gives a lovely hue to your flowers even after coloring them.

 2. Its fun to work with stamp and die cut flowers such as the popular heartfelt creations flowers but suppose you dont want to invest in stamps here is an equally fun and economical tip : Draw fine lines/ other designs on your flower petals using a fine liner sketch pen or a pencil. I used a brown misaki sketch pen.

3. Ink your flower petals  in 2 shades. I  used the cute , handy and not to mention super economical mini distress ink pads [ festive berries, mustard seeds, mowed lawn] to ink the edges and center of my flower petals.

Chose the shades of  your ink to match the colors of  your pattern paper/ stamped image. 4. Emboss / shape your flowers - if your dont have time to emboss just pinching / shaping with your hands is enough if your paper is malleable enough!

5. Layering flowers always looks cool! Unless you are making a pop up card and dont want very bulky flowers!

5. Make leaves in a similar way

• Punch / Die cut leaves from pattern paper - so much more interesting than plain colored paper 
• Add veins using a fine liner pen or pencil
• Inking options : Ink in 2 shades of green, add a touch of brown or black to parts of the leaf!Dont ink uniformly-- a mottled appearance is more natural!

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Shape your leaves by simply pinching or embossing - mix up the elements on your project so that the curvature of the leaves are varied.

6.Glamorize by adding Shimmer to your flowers and leaves

Wink of Stella

          We all love to match things be it our papers, flowers , ribbons etc in a project don't we...well I wanted my flowers to match the shimmering flowers of my pattern paper . Normal glitter would be too garish. I experimented with the Wink of Stella brushes and oh my they really are magical...hard to describe/ capture the beautiful shimmer they give a project.

I used the clear Wink of stella and the brush just glides on so smoothly

I really didnt understand all the fuss in craftland about " wink of stella" till I got to use it!

 The best feature is you can give a very subtle shimmer or really load on a golden hue to your projects by varying the pressure on the brush pen

I hope you liked the card with the handmade flowers.Do tell me how it is.

Products

Dies

Spellbinders Rose creations, Spellbinders Majestic labels 25, Spellbinders borderabilities, 

Heartfelt creations Classic Leaf, Heartfelt creations Sun kissed fleur [ used to make the buds], 

Sizzix Butterfly, 

Cheery Lynn  lamp post, Cheery Lynn  butterflies, 

Elizabeth Craft designs Happy Birthday,Elizabeth Craft designs Oval Accordion die

Inks

Distress Inks : festive berries, mustard seeds, mowed lawn, Versamark watermark

Papers : DCWV
Wink of Stella