Instructions requested for earlier made cards.

Good evening all. this time not a card, but the instructions for the use of some templates that I used as a basis for making some of the birthday cards and the get well card I put on this blog already.




One of my friends on trimcraft requested some further written instructions for the swinging concertina card I had made (the second tiger birthday card on my blog http://trimgym.blogspot.com/2009/02/february-birthdays.html the same that also was used for the get well card http://trimgym.blogspot.com/2009/02/get-well-card-for-my-mother.html).



The template I used for both cards I found at http://www.timeforcrafting.co.uk/, but it was adapted for the purpose as one needed a square and the other a cat shaped window rather than the arch and oval avialble on that site. This site is however definitely worth a visit as it has many templates and ideas of use for card makers as well as some sayings and verses.


The first thing you need is an image that you would like to decorate the card with and to feature in the swinging window. If this is something that would look best on the arch then use this template as a basis.



Either cut out an arch shape or cut out the image layered onto card (square for my tiger card and cat shaped for the cat).

Next find a card to form the inside of the card. Transfer the template below onto the card, cut along the continuous lines and score along the dashed line. You will need to make valley folds for the 2 outside lines (make sure also to fold the window) and you will need to make a hill fold for the middle line.

The template below is how it will look on your work table when you put any backing paper or decoration on for the inside.

Next cut out the outer part of the card using the template below, again cutting along the continuous lines (so, remove the window) and folding along the dashed line. This time a valley fold again. the image below is as it is seen from the inside of the card.

The next step is to attach both cards to eachother.

To do this you will need to apply double sided sticky tape (or use a sticky tape roller) on the back of the inside card featured above (so turn over the view seen here) only on the pieces I have marked on here as A and D above and attach to the inside of the outer card.

Now attach any backing paper to inside and or outside of the card, attach the image to the flap in the window and you will have a working swinging concertina card.

I hope this will help all my friends at trincraft who have requested further instructions. I am always happy to try and help further with instructions if needed. All you have to do is ask.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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.

Best cardmaker of the universe?

Over the weekend I have managed to make a card for my son's friend at his request (see picture above). He has the party to go to next week and new what he wanted to have for a card. Mum, I want to have a space card! One of those springy ones if possible.

The recent 'Making Cards for Children' special had some lovely ideas in there magazine and some lovely papers as well. When I mentioned I could potentially make him one with moving parts, he got very enthousiastic.

On Saturday he chose the background papers he would like for the card and the images he liked. It was then down to me to scan the images and papers and edit and resize them as appropriate as well as the templates for the moving parts.

This took the best of Saturday and Sunday and I finally managed to put the card together on Monday.

On Saturday night my son passed me in the hall, hugged me and told me 'you're the best cardmaker in the universe', then adding 'get it?'. A lovely joke on his account and also a lovely compliment.

Here some of the pictures of the final card. I hope you like it.

This is the full view of the card.

The space ship moves along a penny slider system to reveal the message 'Have an out of this world birthday!'

Behind the space ship is an alien hiding, which can pop up above it with a lever system.

The spaceman on the top of the card also moves from side to side with a wheel at the back of the card for an added bit of fun.

This is a view from the back of the card. It has a little gift box attached in which the money for the present is hiding.

I will try and add the instructions to making this card in my next blog entry some time later, including some of the resized papers and templates. It's now time for a rest though, needing to get up early again tomorrow.

Thank you for looking and I hope you like the card. I certainly enjoyed making it and my son is very excited about the card as well, feeling it's the coolest card ever, and hand made as well he added!

Now I have also entered it into the challenge at Crafts4eternity Challenge.

My latest card

Hello everyone,


I have finally managed to finish my Valentines card for my husband for this year. It is quite a cute one I think and I am very happy with the result. I hope you will all like it as well.

For this card I used some background papers from funky Fairies and I used a Tatty Teddy image for decoupage. There is also a little gift box in which there are some vouchers suitable for the occasion. I really love the result and hope my husband will also like it.








This is the card as it finally turned out, below are some of the close ups.
















The little giftbox. (also from Funky Fairies)







The vouchers, with a photo editing programme I have added my husband's and my names, however these are blocked of for the picture.

On the inside of the card I have used the same background paper again, adding a ellipse with the appropriate text for the occasion. I hope you all like my card and it helps to give you some ideas.



I have entered this card into a competition on trimcraft and am also entering it to the creative inspirations challenges blog. (you can find the last one at http://creativeinspirationschallenge.blogspot.com/)



Good luck to anyone else who plans to enter either of these competitions.



For anyone who would like to take the easy route to decoupage these images, I have put them on some step by step sheets. Hope this is helpful.

Just in case you have looked at this post before, I have now managed to get the proper coloured images on for the 3D sheets. The others were somehow slightly discoloured, possibly due to the programme used to edit them. Hope these are more helpful to those who would like to use them as decoupage sheets for their own use.