Salam Aidilfitri pop up spiral card

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OK! So here's what happened. Some time ago, I had received some really pretty card stock that I got from a good friend of mine. I'm not really sure what they were for, they looked like wedding invitation card stock or something. I never asked her what it really was. It has this really pretty gold lining on all sides and twin gold heart shape on it.

You can see what it looks like in the photos below. Anyways, I have been wanting to use them for something but didn't have an idea back then of how to use them until recently I came up with the idea to recycle them as Raya cards. It doesn't necessarily need to be a Raya card. It can be used as any type of card for any occasion. But I decided to put a Raya sentiment inside so that I can use it myself to give to my loved ones this year. :D

On the inside of the card, once it is folded, you can see like an impressed image of the twin hearts....I really love it! So even though, I don't get to use the twin gold hearts on the outside as part of the decoration on the card, at least I get to see it on the inside.

Oh yeah, one more thing....I got this beautiful pattern papers from her as well. The papers are actually paper scraps that I received in different sizes. I couldn't use them for big projects, so I thought the idea of cutting them this way like small size washi tapes and pasting them on the card as a background design would be a great way to recycle them. I don't have a lot of washi tapes, so using scraps of pattern paper such as this in this technique would be great! And it's so simple too!

The Malaysian quilling flower! Gosh, I haven't been making these in ages! So it was a little awkward trying to make them again after a while, but I quickly got the hang of it after a few tries. They are so much fun to make and pretty too. Definitely not that difficult to make either. You can find a tutorial on how to make them on my YouTube channel and give a go if you are interested to make them yourself.

 

See all those teeny tiny paper dots?? Those are paper dots that I got whenever I use one of my craft punch. I was reluctant to throw them away and they make great background decorations if you know how to use them :).

These are some spiral pop ups I made for the pop up that I plan to paste inside the card. They are probably one of the easiest pop ups that I can make. Simple and fun to look at. :) Once I've cut them up, all that was needed to do was to just past the spiral pop ups with flowers and sentiment. I really enjoyed making this card as I can to recycle all the materials that I had in my craft room. I don't like keeping scraps of papers or card stocks in the room for too long. Need to make way for new materials and have fun experimenting with new ideas. Do check out the video of the card below. You can have an idea of how the spiral pops up inside card! :)

Cross-stitch heart pop up card

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The cross-stitch craze continues with this little love themed pop up card. I just had to do it. I saw the other day on the net some photos of a cross-stitch heart. It was so attractive to me, I was dying to try it out. And so I did! A small one for the small card.

It was not that difficult to do. The only thing I felt difficult to do was the cross-stitch frame on the card. The size was so tiny compared to the one I did previously. I had a hard time punching out the holes and then sewing them, very tiresome to sew so many around the card. Although they looked really cute, I still prefer the previous size, which is much easier and faster to sew.

The pop up inside the card was the most challenging as it was the first time for me to make a pop up heart way up on top of the card like that. Usually the pop up hearts I've made before didn't require me to use a bigger paper insert for the card. This one did. It was the only way to create that pop at the top. It's difficult for me to explain it here. I guess, I'm talking Japanese with you.....but the point is, it was tricky at first, but once I have figured it out.....it's a breeze!

I wrote the sentiments inside the card. Just a simple one, straight to the point. I just wanted to try out as many different types of pop ups this year....especially the ones I've never done before. Combining a couple of types in one card or just one type it doesn't matter as long as I do it differently each time.

Do check out the video I took of the card below. You'll be able to see how the heart pops up at the top several times. I was just a little excited about the whole thing, so much so that I opened and closed it again and again. Hahaha! :D

LOVE pop up card

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Tried something different this time around.....as usual, I always try to do something I've never done before and for this card I tried to do cross-stitch. Did a simple one first, sew a simple frame on the card. Usually I would just sew a simple straight line whenever I wanted to make a frame on my card.....so, instead of doing that, I thought doing cross-stitch would be nice for a change.

I am familiar with cross-stitch as I've done it before when I was in primary school. It was a compulsory thing that we girls had to do back then. I was quite fond of it but it was an expensive hobby. The thread and the cloth was not cheap to buy. Since I'm interested in using this technique on my cards, I thought why not just do it on paper instead. I have tons of it just waiting to be sewn hehehehe! There's plenty of designs of cross-stitch that I would love to try out on paper. Like simple letters, shapes of hearts, flowers etc. As long as it's simple, I would love to try them!

The big soft clay heart was made using a silicone mold I got last year. I love the pattern and I thought it would be nice to use it on one of my cards. Since it's not a flat shape....it's 3D....so it's kinda bulky and I personally think, if I were to use it myself, I wouldn't post it.....I would give it to someone by hand. Unless I have a special box  and wrap it well to protect it from getting damaged during delivery.

The pop-up hearts was really fun to make. Not that difficult to make either. But of course it does consume a lot of time to do it. That's always the case when it comes to making pop-ups. It always takes time to get it done. But I love the outcome.

The card is a small one.....somehow lately I am enjoying making small cute cards for personal use. It's a lot faster to get done than bigger ones. Thus producing more as a result. Do check out the video below and see how the pop-up hearts sways and moves inside :).

More bling bling!

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I was just looking at the gold theme pop up birthday card earlier today and thought to myself......what if I added more bling bling to the card? I have bigger clear coloured rhinestones in my collection that would match the smaller ones and so I started adding them on the washi tapes and thought, hmmmmmmm......not bad! I thought it looked better than before. That's just my personal opinion. :)

Somehow the combination of the big and small rhinestones seems perfect together to me. I wish I had black ones or gold coloured ones.....but since there wasn't any at the store, so the clear ones seems fine here. I just had to blog about it and share the latest look of the card. Because now all of them look like this.....can't help it, I just had to add more bling bling! hahaha! :D

As for the pop up inside the card, it remains the same like the original one. No new additions or changes to it so far. Perhaps I might come up with a new one someday, who knows.  :)

Gold theme pop up birthday card

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Ok, I have to admit, I'm a bit far behind when it comes to using washi tapes on any of my craft work. I bought a few washi tapes last year but never played with any of them at all till now. I must say it was fun playing with them now. Finally. 

I just tried the simplest way to use them which is by cutting them at the ends like we do for ribbons and simply paste them on the card side by side next to some matching pattern papers. I sew all the sides of the gold coloured paper too with a black thread which was another fun thing I love to do. I love sewing thread on paper.... if it suits the card, then I would do it.

Another fun and new thing that I tried this year is adding soft clay as decorations on my cards. It was tough figuring out how to do that but in the end, after a lot of research, I finally got it. At the moment, I experimented a lot on making soft clay decorations that were made by using molds. I had a few free molds from a company from China last year. And some of which I bought from the local stores. I just loved the outcome of it. And the endless possibilities of ways to use them. I just can't wait to use more of them in future. From a far, the soft clay looked like metal, but it's not. I just love the gold effect that somehow hides the fact that it's just soft clay.

Pop ups.....how I miss making them. I want to experiment more on it this year. More pop ups, more fun! It's just a small card and yet, I still wanted to add that pop up inside. I love the idea of adding a surprise inside each card. I made a few ready stocks of the card in case anyone is interested. If not, I'm dying to use them myself. Got a lot of birthdays coming soon! :) Do enjoy the video below!

Weaved heart card for swap

I'm thrilled about this card that I made after I came back from my holidays. The card was meant for a fellow crafter, Hambali Arifin, who swapped his card with me during the craft gathering that I attended in KL last February.

Actually I was out of ideas....was not in the mood and didn't feel too well to do anything much. But I had to do it quickly because I have so many other pending orders to settle and I couldn't waste time being such a baby....sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

I bought quite a lot of craft products when I was at Scrap-n-Crop (the location of the craft gathering), and I took the opportunity to try some of them out for this card design. I used some new distress inks that I bought.....a new die-cut leaves pattern....and also tried a new technique which I've been wanting to try for quite some time now which is mix media. But what I tried for this card is quite amateurish because it was my first time and I was a little afraid....but I did it anyways....just a simple one....if you can spot it, it is the brown polka dots in the background. I used molding paste and a polka dot stencil to create the effect....and then just blend it with Vintage Photo distress ink. I really like the effect :).

I also tried something new for myself which is making the weaved heart....it is actually a great way to recycle pattern papers. Since this swap theme was all about using scraps, so I took some scrap pattern paper that has double pattern on each side...and the colours were really matching so it was suitable to weaved them together. I had fun with it. Lots of new ideas came to mind when I made it. Which I will use for future projects ;).

I really had fun making it and would probably make more ready made ones for sale but with different colour combinations and captions ;).

I love you said the little birds

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The cards I made here are similar to the design I made some time ago which you can view at the link HERE. Everything in the design is the same except that the wordings is changed from 'I miss you' to I love you'. Upon request from my customer, I did this new one and I gotta say that I love the effect of the distress ink I did on this new one. I've gotten a little better with the technique compared to the one I did before which was sooooooo messy....hehehe.

I didn't have time to blog about these cards earlier this month. Been so busy with work. Still am now huhuhu. Hopefully I can have more time to make cards and other crafts. Most of the time now I am busy with work related to craft tools and materials for sale. It's been taking a lot of my time off from creating. I miss creating :(. I didn't even have time to do a blog giveaway this month. Still working on that.....will combine it with the December giveaway somehow. 

I keep wondering whether the time flew so fast lately or I'm getting slower and slower....go figure hehehehe!! ;)

Cutting words out of die-cut alphabets

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It all started a few days ago when I was playing and experimenting with the die-cut alphabets that made me thought of using them to cut out wordings on card stocks. In the beginning I was not too keen on doing it because it would be mean that I would have to separate the die-cut alphabets into individual pieces. I hated doing that because I loved looking at them all joined together. I'm weird no? haha!

But for the love of experiments, I did what I had to do...huhuhu! But I'm glad now that I did that because otherwise I wouldn't be able to try out this technique. Check out the photo above where I did the wordings "thank you" using the die-cut alphabets. I love the fact that I can arrange them any way I like on the card. At first I arranged them in a straight line before cutting them with the die-cut machine.......but after a while I got bored and arranged them randomly like the one I did for the swing card below.

For the wordings on the note size card you see above, I used a scrap pattern paper to layer behind the cut out alphabets, but for the swing card below, I used a shiny transparent fabric and white paper to layer behind the cut out alphabets. So cutting out the alphabets on card stocks are fun because it reminds me of what I did before with my bookmarks. You can view a sample of what I did with my bookmarks at the links HERE and HERE. It's similar in concept but different in technique because the one I did for my bookmarks were cut out by hand using a craft knife. That was a lot harder to do compared to using die-cut alphabets.

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I think by far, this is the simplest swing card design I've ever made. The only thing that is difficult to do for me is the blending of the distress ink on each corner of the card because I'm still learning how to control the blending tool. Sometimes it works really well, sometimes it doesn't but I can't blame it on the blending tool, I must blame myself because I'm not getting enough practice. Must practice more. ;)

Pop up graduation hat card

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I got an order the other day to do a graduation card, but I didn't have enough time to do it. I didn't want to take the order at first but since my customer persisted, so I accepted the order in the end. But I told her, I only have time to make a simple one and a small one too since my schedule is pretty full for this month. Luckily she didn't mind it at all. :)

I believe......this is my second graduation card design. I don't really design graduation cards a lot. Don't really fancy making them that much as compared to other types of cards. Don't ask why ehehehe.

Well, for this design, I thought of doing something different. I thought of doing a pop up inside it. But didn't know what would it be until I saw a tutorial on how to make a graduation hat! That really caught my eye! Immediately I tried making it and I was surprised at how easy it was to make one. I really enjoyed making it and I especially love making the tassel for the hat! That was pretty fun! :D 

Since the card itself is pretty small, so the graduation hat had to be made small in size as well. That was the only thing that was pretty tricky for me to do. Especially since I have big hands, and chubby fingers, LOL! :D I also tried something new by stamping some flowers and colouring them and later making them pop below the graduation hat. Although it's very easy to do, I still loved it anyways since it's something new for me to try. All this time, I've always made pop up flowers from scratch, so making pop up flowers from rubber stamps were a fun thing to try out.

All in all, what's important is that I had fun.....and I tried something new.....plus, I made my customer very happy ;). You can view how the graduation hat pop up in the card at the video below: