Another Tiger Birthday card.

Good afternoon on this wet last day of February!



And a Very Happy 11th Birthday to my daughter 'Tigerlover'!



I have previously already shown you the birthday card I made for her and for her grandmother. Following the last one, I felt I had quite possibly not done a 'good enough' card for my daughter and I wanted to do an even nicer one than I had already made her.



So, out came the crafting stuff again yesterday and I 'quickly' set out to finish this task, already having thought out a design in my head.



And here is just a little peek to make you more hungry to read on as full instructions and backgrounds will follow.




For this card I used instructions from the Crafter's Companion 'A Touch of Christmas' compilation CD-ROM. I also made use of 3D sheets and backing papers found at
http://s33.photobucket.com/albums/d71/alottment1/ and edited them to my own needs.

Below is an adapted A4 sheet of vellum background using the vellum background sheet as a basis and adapting it to the correct size.



I then edited this further using Picasa3, using the sepia function. This sheet was used for the outside cover of the card.

I also changed it to blue for the embellishments of 'Happy Birthday' on the front of the card and cut out some scalloped circles with a Woodware punch.

For the inside cover of the card I turned it to a dark pink.

I used the 3D white tiger sheet and flipped the image, with the 2 versions fitting on one A4 sheet, then cut them out and built them up to 3D images using silicone glue. Having 2 mirror images ensured that they would fit exactly back to back for a flipping tiger image.


This are the 2 mirror 3D tigers before further assembly. They were stuck together back to back with silicone glue, but before fitting them together, I first put a string in between them for later assembly to the card and to ensure they would be able to spin.

Ok, down to the card making and the assembly of the card, in other ways, let's get down to the instructions.

First I cut all the images of the tiger and assembled them to eachother and left them to dry.

I then took two pieces of pink A4 card, put them in front of me in landscape format and drew a line in the middle of both.

From this line on each side I marked points 1.5 cm from it and drew 2 more lines. Both cards were folded along those 2 lines.

The outside card was now ready, but the inside card needed more folds.

From each side a line was drawn 3.5 cm from the edge and the card was again folded along those 2 lines, but the opposite way.

Next the inside card was covered with the darker pink background paper and at the back a rectangle was marked 6 cm wide by 8 cm high for the window, exactly in the middle of the paper. The rectangle was then carefully cut out.

As a next step the string was attached in the middle of the window with the tiger hanging from it ensuring it would hang in such a way that it could freely spin around. It was then attached with double sided sticky tape.

The inside of the card was now finished.

Time to finish the outside of the card.

For this a piece of ribbon was first stuck to the middle of the card on the outside at both edges with doublesided sticky tape, so it would be possible to tie them together and in that way close the card.

After this the sepia backingpaper was put on the outside cover of the card.

On the inside of the outside cover 2 lines were drawn, 1.5 cm from the edge and the inside of the card was attached to it coming up to those lines.

Two circles were punched out of the blue background paper and attached to the front of the card with foam pads, both carrying the message 'Happy Birthday'.

On the spine of the card another peel off with 'Happy Birthday' was stuck as well as 2 peel offs forming 11 above it. It now had the image of a book when closed.

Below are some images of the finished card, I hope you like them.

The front of the card.

The spine of the card.

The opening side of the card with the tied ribbon.

A good view of the opened card, the tiger is able to spin in the window.

Another view of the inside of the card.

And a last view of the inside of the card.

As you can imagine, my daughter liked the card when she got it this morning, she also liked the first card.

Thank you for looking, your comments are welcome.

This one is also entered for the craft challenge numbers at http://creativeinspirationschallenge.blogspot.com/2009/02/challenge-3.html

Get well card for my mother

Good afternoon all,

I've finally managed to get back online again. I've had some trouble earlier in the day and had wanted to update you on my latest card earlier. Well, here it is finally.

My mother is just recovering from a flu-like illness and I understand she is having a minor operation today. I thought it would therefore be a good idea to send her a Get Well Soon card.

For this card I have used some decoupage and background papers from the Lilac Garden (a link is on my blog). I have had to slightly edit and resize the background papers a little to fit the purpose. I have also made an insert/background for the inside of the card and both are also displayed below.

The base card measures 17x12 cm (17x24 if folded out) and is made to be a swinging window card. Two were cut out to this side to enable this.

I really liked how this worked out for the birthday card for my mother in law.

Due to the decoupage image used for this card, it was a bit more tricky to cut out the window for this one. I hope you like the card, there are several views of the card below.

This is a view from the front, the cat is carrying a basket with some fruit and some Vitamin C as well as a bowl of chicken soup.

This is the resized background as edited for the card.

And the insert for the card with a oval frame for the message. Feel free to use these if you like.

A view from the side, showing the cat swinging in its window.

A view partially from above to show how the card works.

And a view to really show off the swinging cat.

Close up.

Another close up.

And another view of the card. I'm quite pleased with how the card has turned out. Thank you for looking. Hope you like it.

As an afterthought I have just added the matching envelope I made, I printed off some more backing paper and lined the handmade envelope with it to match the card.

February Birthdays

Good evening everyone!

There are 2 important birthdays for me in February. The first is my mother-in-law's birthday and the second one is my daughter's birthday. They have their birthdays only 4 days apart and are both totally mad about tigers. As usual I have made them a Tiger birthday card.

The first idea I had was to have a slightly differently shaped card for my mother-in-law, the one featured below.

For this card I used a decoupage sheet from The Lilac Garden at http://www.thelilacgarden.co.uk/ , they have some very lovely decoupage and matching background papers. The background papers I have used have been adapted and edited by myself. I hope you like the card.





This card has been made as a square card measuring 17x17 cm. The front of the card has been cut slightly to form a triangle. From the fold of the card there were 2 cm on top and bottom and I cut it from those points to the middle of the loose side of the front of the card.

The decoupaged image was then mounted on the point. Unfortunately the card failed to stand up in this way and I had to think of a solution to this problem. I therefore printed a background onto another page and cut this to the same size and mounted the front of the card onto this.


The background was made by cutting and pasting several of the top layers of the tiger image from the decoupage sheet onto a white background. (see below) I also printed this off on some yellow paper slightly edited with a oval textbox containing the message for the birthday girl.

The other background used for the cards is also below.

Following this the card finally did manage to stand up and here are some further pictures of the card.


This is another view from the front, the one below meant to show the 3D feature of the decoupage image a little better.

On the picture below you can also see part of the insert with the textbox, this one is on a pale yellow background.

Well, my mother-in-law's card was done, I thought. All that was needed now was to continue with the next card due, the one for my daughter. It however didn't quite turn out like that as the idea I next came up with was one I liked even more and that I decided would be better for my mother-in-law. The above card therefore will be made into my daughter's card.

This card needed to card blanks, both with their insides facing towards eachother. The outside one had a window cut out half the size of the decoupaged image towards the open side of the card. The inside had a little window at the same point which was still articulating towards the middle of the front of the card. The decoupaged imaged was then mounted on the articulating bit of card. Below is an image from the front of the card, showing the decoupaged picture which moves in the window.

Below is a picture of the inside of the card.

Another image from the front is below, showing the decoupaged picture articulating within the window.

The last picture of this card has been taken from the top and shows the 2 cards stuck together to form the eventual card.

I hope you all like the card as much as I do. And I certainly hope my mother-in-law will like it as I'm pretty sure she will.

Thanks for looking.