15th Birthday Snowy Pop-up Card

This just in - I've discovered the wonderful world of scrapbooking. Not very common in Israel but apparently very popular in the States - this paper crafting art completely won me over. I'll leave a great link for tutorials at the end of this post, but first - how I made a pretty pop-up birthday card for my baby sister's 15th birthday. Here we go...

So because it's December, what with Christmas and the stormy weather and the end of the world (which has respectfully declined its attendance) and all, I decided to make a magical snowy card to match the wonderful chilly atmosphere.

I began with cutting out two cards - a white one to serve as an exterior, and a dark blue one for the background of the inside snowy scene:

Next I marked the pop-up squares which would serve as a basis for my scene. I traced them in with a light pencil, but highlighted the marks in this picture to make them more visible for this tutorial (by the way, it's ok if the pencil marks show, as we're going to glue objects over these boxes anyhow):

And once I cut the side lines and folded the card, it looked like this:

I've decided that my snowy scene would involve two sets of snowy-roofed houses. I cut out the basic shapes out of blank cardboards (a black one for the back, and a light blue one for the front). The I cut out snow from a white textured paper, and glued it onto the roof-tops. To finish it off, I drew in windows with gold and silver pens. Finally, I cut another piece of textured paper with decorative swirls, and glued it on the foreground layer, to add a bit of spark to it.

Now it was time to start decorating the card itself, creating an interesting background. I cut two  patterned papers as wavy decorations for the sky, and punched in stars using a cute little star puncher.

I also drew in stitch-like  and swirly marks with my silver pen. Once the bottom was also decorated accordingly, it looked like this:

I wanted to make a cut-out of the number 15 to stand behind the building, and cut it out of a turquoise patterned paper to add some brighter color to the card. I glued the numbers on to a black cardboard background, and decorated it a bit more with my silver pen.

It's gluing time! Putting all the pieces together...

This whole scene was inserted into the white card (remember it from the beginning?). Now the inside is finished! Ta-da:

The last thing was created an outside decoration, which I made using the same patterned papers, textures and colors as the inner part. And voila, we're done!

HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY, LOOLIE!

As promised, here is a great link to Blackcatscraps, which is Allison's brilliant YouTube channel, featuring many great scrapbooking and card-making tutorials - http://www.youtube.com/user/BlackCatScraps

Enjoy!

A 3D Beatles Birthday Card!

Ok, so this is definately the coolest greeting card I've made so far. And here's how it was done.

So hubby had a birthday (has today actually) and there I was, wrecking my brains trying to come up with an idea for a cool birthday card to make. As I happened to stumble upon a fabulous pop up blog, my problem was solved. Shira Ganany's beautiful blog - The Little Green Box - is all about her perfectly crafted paper goodies with tutorials to match. It was there that I've discovered the magic of the Diorama - a brilliant 3D pop-up greeting card! In the link above you can see the full elaborate tutorial, I'll just give the quick gist of it here.

So now that I had the form worked out, I needed content. Since hubby is a Beatles fan (understatement) I decided that nothing could be more perfect than having the Fab Four wishing him a very happy birthday.

The first step was finding caricatures of the Beatles, which I have found here. The next step was building the frame and coloring it (in photoshop, of course) which ended up looking something like this:

Then I separated the different elements for printing, and went to a printing shop to print it out (on a thick white paper - 250 gr):

Since the last time I actually practiced arts and crafts which involved cutting and gluing was in around 5th grade, this wasn't as easy as I remembered... The Japanese knife proved darn difficult and I ended I resorting to the good old scissors.

Then it was time to cut up the frames - three frames of 10x15 and 1 cm wide (in gradient colors), one block of 10x15 for the back, and 2 fan-like pieces for each frame, like so:

After gluing the little accordion bits to the frames and then the frames to each other (the tutorial in the little green box shows exactly how) I started putting in the Beatles cut outs and the rest of the birthday decorative pieces. This is how it finally came out:

Isn't it awesome?! Hubby was well happy :)
Have a great birthday, love!

Holiday Greetings!

It's been a while since my last post...

Just wanted to wish everyone a very happy holiday and lots of fun!

Here's a quick illustration, couldn't be bothered with coloring it :)