One last Hurrah for Butterfly Reflections Ink blog with a couple of pop-up cards

Hi guys!

Today is the last day for my term on the Butterfly Reflections Ink design team and I have made a pop-up box card for my final blog post. I made a few mistakes along the way and decided to make another one, with the mistakes in mind, to try and improve on the design. 

Before I get to that one, let’s have a quick look at the first one: I went with a blue colour scheme, for no other reason than that I love blue.

To take out all the guess work out of dimension for the box card itself, I used the Scalloped Pop-up Box card Lawn Cut. I’m rubbish with numbers and calculations so this is a life-saver for me. Two quick cuts and you have your standard box! Easy peasy! I decided to use patterned paper to make it a bit festive, and got out Hearts & Stripes from MFT Stamps. I added four dividers in the box, but this might have been a bit ambitious in hindsight. I also cut out rectangles in the same colour card stock as the outside of the box, to add to the inside flaps of it. I was in a very coordinating mood, lol! The patterned paper packs give you so much choice when it comes to colours and patterns, you can pick and choose to suit the occasion or the recipient favourite colour.

To keep the colours cohesive and to match the patterned paper, I decided to use some of the many balloons I had already coloured up from the Simply Celebrate stamp set, which were all done in blues with some grey added to a few. This was a set I wanted from the moment I first laid eyes on it! All the balloons are cut out with the coordinating diecut too.

In order to keep the balloons stable, I cut out lots of the ‘sticks’ from the box diecut and layered them two and two. These I adhered to the dividers and stacked the balloons to make them all show.

Sentiment-wise I have used a combination of Happy Happy Happy stamp set plus coordinating diecut as well as another Lawn Fawn stamp set called Home Sweet Home I stamped up the banner from the Home Sweet Home set and added ‘Birthday’ to it from the Happy Happy Happy set. The Happy bit is coloured in with Copics.

To add sparkle, I cut out lots of stars and glued these onto “paper sticks” which I then added to the box. A couple of them also got added to the banner to frame the ‘birthday’.

As I had gone a bit mad with the dividers inside the box I actually ended up with an empty one as the balloons in the back are adhered to the box itself. To cover this front divider up, I stamped up the candles from the Simply Celebrate stamp set and coloured them in with Copics too. I had to trim off two candles to make it fit inside the box and not cover up the ‘Happy’ bit and I did this by fussy cutting before glueing it down.

 

Well, all in all, it’s not too shabby but you know when you just know it’s not perfect and it bugs you? Yeah, that’s how I feel about this one… So, to combat that, I decided to make another one and hopefully learn from my mistakes on this one.

For the second box I decided to go for rainbow colours! Another MFT Stamps patterned paper stack came out: Party Patterns. At the time of writing this blog post, it’s sold out everywhere (no wonder actually as it’s gorgeous!) However, if you can’t wait to get something similar, MFT Stamps has a fabulous selection of patterned paper packs. As does Scrapbook.com, their selection of patterned paper deserves a ‘wow’, there is a dizzying amount of choice there, Doodlebug Designs amongst others. I have a bit of a patterned paper hoarding problem myself but I know for a fact I’m not alone with this “problem”, lol!

Right, I kind of lost the red thread there for a moment, ogling all the pretty papers. The Lawn Fawn Scalloped Box Card cut came out again and two times through my BigShot later, I had my box pieces.

The paper I picked out for the second box is a lovey bright, rainbow striped pattern. Just gorgeous. If I could get a pack with just these stripes, I’d probably get like 5 packs right away. I love it!

So the box itself came together quite quickly and I added four dividers to this one too, which you might think was a bit mad seeing how I thought it was too many for the first one. Well, there is an explanation for sure: I wanted to make it almost identical, just fix my mistakes from the first one i.e. better placing of the balloons and sentiments.

I stamped up another three sets of balloons, as well as the candles, from the Simply Celebrate stamp set and got my Copic markers out again. These I coloured in with rainbow colours too and then cut them out using the coordinating Lawn Cut. The ‘Happy’ image from the Happy Happy Happy set was also coloured in with a rainbow colour scheme and cut out with its coordinating Lawn cut.

Assembly isn’t that time consuming when you already know where most of the images are going to go and you have all your bits and pieces done. After cutting out gold glitter stars for this one (with one of the little dies that comes with the Box die), and making my ‘paper sticks’ as well as cutting out the ones meant to lift up the balloons it was just glue-add-glue-add job and it should have been done. You’d think anyway… well, it is I, Erica the Crafting Drama Queen, lover of a good crafty twist so no. That is not how it went *facepalm*

After deciding in which order the balloons were going to go, I added the balloons in the back to the first divider rather than the back of the box. OH! Twist no1!

Twist no2 came when it was time to place the candles in the box. Instead of trimming these down and tucking them in, I added it in full-size and covered up the “holding sticks” with gold glitter stars.


Twist no3 came soon after that. The ‘Happy‘ bit was adhered to the back of the candles rather than behind them, as on the first card.
I’m not sure that adding loads more gold glitter stars will qualify as a twist as I’m not known for holding back on the bling? Nah, let’s just say that I added… a fair few… more to this box than the first one. Eh, what can I say?


Anyway, with that, I’m done for the day but I would like to wish my dear friend Pernille a very happy birthday! We used to go for a birthday brunch in between her birthday, today, and mine, on the 11th of May, whilst I lived in Denmark but sadly that’s not going to happen this year. Next year, I might need to plan ahead and make it happen.

I have used compensated affiliate links where possible in this post, to Scrapbook.com where there is a huge selection of Lawn Fawn and MFT Stamps amongst others, thank you in advance if you use these to purchase anything. I get a small commission from the company directly if you do this, at NO extra cost to you whatsoever. Every time you use someone’s affiliate links, you help them along on their crafting journey so please do make sure you use them when you can. It really means the world to us all!

I’m going to submit both these cards to the current Lawn Fantatics Challenge #27 as it’s 3D cards.


Lots of love and happy crafting from Erica

Lawn Fawn Challenge 22 -two cards with You Octopi My Heart

Hi guys!
I’m popping in with a couple of cards I made for the Lawn Fawnatics Challenge 22-Inky Fingers

My take on this challenge was to stamp up my little Octopi My Heart stamp a couple of times in Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colour him/her in with Copic markers and then create the backgrounds using inks, stamps and Lawn cuts. These cards came out quite ‘Valentine’s Day-ish’ but can be used for anniversaries, birthdays or generally soppy moments. Or change the colour scheme and the sentiment to make it a boy-ish birthday card.

For the backgrounds I’ve gone in different directions, technique-wise, for each card to make them individual, yet matchy. The design is very simple yet each element help make the card pop in it’s own way. For example, a) I used the same Distress Oxide ink colours Candied Apple, Fired Brick and Iced Spruce and b) the only stamp set is the Octopi My Heart yet and c) the Lawn Cuts are the same however, the finished cards do not look too similar.

OK, that sounded a lot less complicated and less contradicting in my head… I think I’ll skip out on trying to explain it any further and will just show you instead.

To create my own patterned paper I got some Strathmore Bristol Vellum card stock out and the inks I had chosen for these cards. On a piece big enough to cut out the biggest of the Lacy Heart Stackable Lawn Cuts I blended Fired Brick and Candied Apple together for a rich red. Using a natural sponge I had dipped in water and wrung out, I dabbed this in a random pattern all over it to activate the oxidation of the ink. For my second piece of patterned paper I dabbed my mini inkblending tools on the ink pads and simply dabbed these to create circles on my card stock. I should have taken better photos of these before I cut them up but oh well.. Hopefully it will give you an idea of what I meant.

After I had cut out the hearts I wanted using the Outside In Stitched Heart Stackables I decided to frame them using the Lacy Heart Stackables. I cut out a red one out of Chili Peper card stock, for the ink blended heart and one gray, out of Storm Cloud card stock, as well as one white for the circle heart. The gray one I stacked slightly off to let the white one be seen through the gaps. It created a lovely contrast to the red card base. This picture is with just the dark gray card stock.

On the card bases, one was white (Neenah Classic Crest Solar white 110#) and one was red (Lawn Fawn card stock in Chili Pepper) I decided to add some fun interest by dabbing some Candied Apple Distress Oxide ink with the same natural sponge I used to oxidise the ink on the ink blending piece, on my white card base. On my Red one I stamped a pattern using the little bubbles that comes in the stamp set using Iced Spruce.

I used the same sentiment for both cards, ‘You octopi my heart’, both stamped in Candied Apple red, one on a strip of white card stock and the other one directly onto the heart, with the dabbed ink circles.

The hearts themselves I added to the card bases using foam tape and the octopi were both added with foam tape too, because what else? *Foam tape addict* One of the cards only got the sentiment strip and a few Sparkling Clear sequins added to it after that. It didn’t need anything else actually. Which is unexpected coming from me, I know, lol!

The second card got five extra hearts, which I cut out of the red inkbleneded piece as well as clear drops in different sizes added. The hearts are added with foam tape but I think I went with one too thick for these actually. Best remember that for next time. Oh and some Glossy Accents on the octopi’s eyes to make them stand out a little bit.

Well, with that, I’m all done and will be submitting these to the challenge as there is a $25 gift voucher up for grabs for the randomly drawn winner!

OK, just one last picture before I go! I hope you like these cards and will feel inspired to try any of the techniques I’ve used here.

Happy crafting from Erica