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!