cQc84 Father's Day

Really?!?!??  It's May 12th!! 




I played at a girlfriend's house yesterday.  She always has display boards of ideas and I often just happily CASE her ideas.  I did start CASing this card with the randomly stamped image panel, but the colors and the entire layout are my own.

I have absolutely no natural light this morning so the whole photo has a yellowish cast. I do wish the goggles at the bottom were moved to the left, but they aren't my stamps and I didn't notice until I was taking the photos this morning!

The colors are from the colourQ challenge.

• Stamps: Stampin' Up Plane & Simple, Itty Bitty Backgrounds (for the yellow sprinkle)
• Ink: Stampin' Up Old Olive, Crumb Cake, Not Quite Navy, Daffodil
• Paper: Stampin' Up Not Quite Navy, Old Olive, Crumb Cake, Whisper White, Daffodil dsp
• Accessories: Stampin' Up Modern Label and Designer Label Punches, Old Olive Grosgrain, Cuttlebug embossing folder

P.S. If you read last week's Rabble of Butterflies and Flock of CAS Birds, I did finally go back and add the recipes.  Sorry it took so long!

Splitcoast Sketch 332

It's May, isn't it?

I can't argue too much because we desperately need the moisture - we've already started having wildfires.  So many people assume the Denver area gets lots of snow - but that's the mountains.  Where we are, we can get snowstorms, but it will all melt in a few days and we are out bicycling and golfing.

When I saw today's Splitcoast Sketch Challenge I knew that I was ready to go, because I have piles of leftover scraps on my desk from the past weekend's cardmaking for service day at church.  We made a very simple card with an embossed kraft background, one of Papertrey's mat stack dies and their Tiny Treats set which included lots of cute birthday images to color.   (I am describing this in detail because the actual hundreds of cards that we created are in my car and you just saw the picture of what it is doing outside - I am NOT walking outside in my PJs!)

I used some leftover stamped shapes, a different image and I stepped it up a little bit to match the sketch.  It's not real fancy - but it's a guy card!

I plan to be at a friend's house crafting this afternoon so I hope to have some cards to share after that.  But there will likely be some blog silence after that.  As you may know, I am totally addicted to my iPod (as is evidenced by the iPod App tab at the top of this page.)  I am the queen of organization and my 15-year career was as an actuary - so my iPod isn't just for games and music - it totally feeds my {anal}ytical side.  I have databases of ribbons by color, paper by every color, buttons, wishlists, copic matches and current challenges. And that's just for cardmaking...I also have reading wishlists, databases of mysteries, lists of all the hymns in all of my piano music.  It's a little overboard!

But I am slowly going blind trying to see them all on my iPod.  So guess what my wonderful family did for Mother's Day?  I have iPad2 being delivered tomorrow morning.  Happy day!!  I may not come up for air for days as I get my iPad set up to organize my life!!!

• Stamps: Stampin' Up Tags & More, Papertrey Tiny Treats: Birthday for dots on diecut
• Ink: Memento black, copics
• Paper: packs of paper from Michaels
• Accessories: Papertrey Mat Stack 5 die, Cuttlebug dots (it's one of the 5x7 folders) and star border folder, yellow stickles, Mark Richards black nailheads

Splitcoast CAS118: Banners

This just isn't something you see very often...

More on this later!

First, I have my card(s) for today's Splitcoast Clean and Simple challenge: Banners.  I thought I was done with graduation cards for our church card ministry, but the idea of a CAS card with banners got me thinking that I could do a group of cards based on each local high school's school colors.  So I finished those three and realized there were two private schools.  I probably should have done some of the schools from the suburbs north and west of us, but I never obsess over things like that! (That thud you heard was the sound of all of my cardmaking buddies falling out of their chairs laughing hysterically over the fact that I stated I don't obsess!)

• Stamps: Studio G sentiment (the cheap stamps at Michaels), Taylored Expression banner
• Ink and Paper: a variety to match school colors
• Accessories: Taylored Expressions banner die, Cuttlebug folder, misc brads.

So what's up with the penguins??

This weekend our church held our second annual day of service.  We had 15 different projects- some in the church, many out in the community.  I was in the church working with a group making Magic Cards - they are great cards for kids as they image is black and white until you pull up a tab and it magically becomes colored (tutorial here).  We are giving them to Lutheran Family Services who will use them as birthday cards for their clients.  Since I was in the church, my pictures are some of the inhouse projects - but the people outside did such things as feed our local firefighters, build a handicap ramp, clean up the yard of a WWII vet, garden at Girls/Boys Hope homes, work at our local food bank and others.

This is a small portion of the group stuffing the penguins
to give to Ronald McDonald house.  They carefully
placed a heart in each penguin and then
decorate "birth certificates".

Here's part of the group making birthday cards.

This group is decorating brown paper bags for
Project Angel Heart.  That group delivers meals
to people dealing with life-threatening illness.
The meals are necessary, but the bags are treasured!

Here's my boys!  After they went to one of our
shut-ins home to install their air-conditioning units,
they worked to fill bags with toiletries to donate
to The Gathering Place - a safe daytime refuge for
women and children experiencing homelessness
and poverty.

I have to credit my husband for the success of the birthday card project.  I was so totally overwhelmed last week with our regular church cardmaking gathering, the service day (I also did all of the organizing/communicating) and a big bell choir finale with a full orchestra - that it fell to my husband to get all the parts and pieces of the birthday cards together.  He cut and scored for three days - and he will proudly show you his paper cuts!

Friday Focus: Magic Cards

My church is having a service day tomorrow and my job is to work with a group to create birthday cards for Lutheran Family Services to give to kids who are clients.  I decided that I wanted to make the card a gift in itself so planned to make Magic Cards.  Have you seen them?

Cute, but a little boring:

Surprise!!

I searched all over the internet to find ways to make this project manageable for a large group of people, many of whom aren't even cardmakers.  And I came up with a card that is a mish-mash of a variety of sources.  (I have credited all the sources at the bottom.)

I also want you to realize as you read this tutorial that we are doing these in bulk so there is really nothing fancy about these cards other than the "surprise!"  You can obviously add dsp, ribbon, gems, etc.

The basic concept is simple.  Stamp images on a piece of acetate and a piece of white cardstock.  Color the image on the cardstock.  If there is a piece of cardstock under the acetate piece, you only see the black stamped image.

But if the cardstock is removed, you start seeing the colored image underneath!

A Magic Card is constructed so that the plain white cardstock is the middle of the card and as the recipient pulls up on the tag, the colored image comes into view!!  It's so much fun!!!


Here's what you need:

THE BASIC CARD:

1. A 4x8 piece of cardstock for the main card, scored at 2" from each side (as if to make a trifold card)

2. A way to cut a window in the center of the card - punches, nestabilities, craft knife, etc.

3. A way to decorate the front.  Because we are making these in bulk, we are simply embossing the front.  You could easily add patterned paper - cut a 3 3/4" square and it will center right on this 4x4 card.  (Of course, if you use paper, you probably want to add it before cutting out the window in step 2!)



THE IMAGE:

1. A 2 1/2" x 4 1/4" inch piece of cardstock with an image stamped on it.  The only trick here is that the image needs to be able to peek out the window.  So put your cardstock into the card with about 1/2" sticking out of the top (that is going to become our pull tab.)  Then stamp through the window.

If your image is too big for the window, place it in the card as in the first picture and then lightly pencil around the window.  Take the cardstock out and you can stamp your image.  To be honest, I like making my image bigger than my window - it's a bigger surprise when they pull it up!

2. Color it!    It's also fun to add sentiments or other images because they will not appear in the window until the tab is pulled up.

3. A 2 1/2" x 4 1/4" inch piece of ACETATE with the image stamped in on it in STAZ-ON ink - LINED UP WITH THE IMAGE ON THE CARDSTOCK!  Here are the steps:

     a. First, adhere the blank acetate onto the top of the cardstock with the image.

         

     b. If you are using a clear stamp and can see through it to line it up - just stamp it on the acetate!!  Otherwise, find your stamp-a-ma-jig! Remember - you need to use Staz-On ink because you are stamping on plastic

A Stamp-a-Ma-Jig tutorial can be found on this post.

     c. I only stamped my main image on the acetate so the remainder will be hidden until the tab is pulled.  At this point it looks like this.

Lifted up, you can see the image.

If the acetate is down, you cannot
tell that there are two images.

4. A 1 1/4"x 3" piece of cardstock folded in half lengthwise.  This is simply to hide the tape.

5. A punched circle to make it easier to pull.

I computer generated the "pull
here" but it is certainly not necessary.



THE INSIDE MECHANICS:

1. A 3 3/4" x 7 1/2" piece of card stock, scored in the middle (at 3 3/4").  Then you need a slit in the center of the scored piece leaving 1/2" on each side.  I just held a ruler along the scored edge and used a craft knife, but the second picture shows another easy method with the Stampin' Up Word Window Punch...or you could use the edge of a nestability.

 OR

Using the punch upside down,
line it up about 1/2" from the edge.

After the first punch, simply slide it over
to about 1/2" from the other edge to
make a full slot.

OR

Just use one side of a nestie.

2. A 3 1/4"x 5/8" piece of white cardstock to act as a "stopper"

PUT IT ALL TOGETHER:

1. Slide the paper part of the image panel into the slit of the cardstock from the prior step.

2. This is the backside of the piece.  If you were to pull the tab up - the whole thing would come right out of the slit.  So we are going to add a "stopper".

     a. Apply adhesive along the bottom back portion of the image panel.



     b. Add the small piece cut in the prior step with a little bit sticking out of both sides.

     c. So when you pull it up, the piece of paper is too large to fit in the slit and it stops it from coming all the way out.

3. Now you want to add the image mechanism into the main card so that it looks like this.

     a. To adhere it all together, apply adhesive down both sides of the front of the image mechanism - be sure not to get any adhesive on the acetate or it won't pull up!!

     b. Lay the image on the main panel - aligning the top of the image mechanism with the main panel.

4. Now we want to close it all up.  Apply adhesive around the outside edges of the main panel.

5. Fold it closed.

Ta da!!  You are done!!

Now...a few other sources...

Magic Birthday Card YouTube video - the mechanism that I used came from this video.  Her card is a larger size because she does use a version of the tab that "hides" in the card (it's not above the card), then she inserts a ribbon to pull it up.  I find this a little harder method as it is very difficult to line up the two images and it is also hard to put the image back down as it gets stuck on the way down.

Magic Max YouTube Video - this video gave me the idea of the tab above the card but the problem in her method is that there is no "stopper" to keep the image from coming right out of the mechanism.

Magic Card Tutorial on Splitcoast - this is a very original way to do the card out of one piece of paper.  It's fascinating to do it once - but it's very complicated - you have no idea what you are doing until it is all together.

Last but not least, all my colors came from colourQ (except that after an entire day of cutting, stamping, photographing and writing this blog post, I just realized it was supposed to be vanilla! I hope you'll forgive me!)  For our project tomorrow, I am simply taking up packs of these colors and letting each person pick their own arrangement of colors.

• Stamps: A muse rocket, Darcies sentiment
• Ink: Memento black and copics that coordinate with Daffodil, Tangerine, Peach, Turquoise
• Paper: Stampin' Up Daffodil, Tangerine, Peach, Turquoise
• Accessories: large oval punch, star punch, Cuttlebug embossing folder

A Rabble of Butterfly Cards

Yesterday I posted a "flock" of bird cards.  I had to look up what a group of butterflies were called and they are a "swarm" (which I used on an earlier post today) and a "rabble".  So here's my rabble of butterfly cards!

The first card uses baby wipes and reinkers.  I found it on a post on the clean&simple blog from over a year ago.

The next card is for this week's sketch challenge at Just Add Ink.

This card was inspired by a card by Sunflower Stamper.  When I saw it I realized that I had this funky tool from Crop Stop that functions as a "B" plate in the cuttlebug but has the middle cut out so it doesn't emboss.  (See the second pix.  They also now have one with an oval opening.)

I am still in my church cardmaking panic - I have to leave in 1/2 an hour and I still have to plop some dinner in front of the kids and maybe I should get out of my sweats!!  So I will be back on Sunday to fill in all of the "recipes" for these cards.  Sorry for any inconvenience.