Double star loop flower pop up birthday card

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The pop up craze and cross-stitch continues. Not to mention the washi tapes and soft clay too. I guess, you'll be seeing those things a lot in my future designs.....well at least for the next few weeks until I get a little bored using them for my handmade cards. Hehehehehe!!

I've been making a lot of the smaller size cards lately and for today I wanted to share a bigger one for a change. It's not that big though, just half the size of an A4 paper. I started with sewing the cross-stitch all around the edge of the card to form a frame for the decorations. I used 4 different types of red colour embroidery threads. I love the effect it gives compared to using just one type of colour.

The polka dots washi tapes was then lined up with the patterned papers, birthday sentiment, quilled flowers and leaves, and lastly touched up with the rhinestones. I made those double star loop flowers long time ago. But only now do I use them for my design. The flower itself is so tedious to make. Takes such a long time to complete one flower. I guess that's why I never used them before. I do have a tutorial on how to make them if you are interested to try. Check out the video below:

I've always wanted to make this type of pop up technique for my cards. It's not that difficult to make either. I like it a lot because I can paste so many flowers together and not worry about any of them bumping into each other whenever the card opens and closes. Basically, you can use all sorts of subjects to pop up with this technique. I'll definitely make more of this type of pop up in future now that I know how to do it. :) Do check out the video of the completed card at the video below and see how the pop up flowers spread open like a fan when the card opens up. Hope you all like it! :) Enjoy!

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 :).

On Your Wedding Day swing card

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Initially, I didn't intend on making a wedding card. I wanted to make a birthday card. But when I was decorating the lattice on the card, I suddenly visualized a couple of butterflies resting on it and then it struck to me that the card would be suitable as a wedding card instead.

You know how much I love swing cards by now as I have been making a lot of them for the past couple of years. And one of the things that I've always wanted to do is to do a lattice pattern on the mid section of the card. Since I don't have any die-cut patterns of lattice or anything of the sort that looks like it available at hand, that means that I had to make one myself. So the simplest way of doing it is by drawing it on the card and cutting them out by hand.

I gotta say that I had fun cutting the lattice out and decorating it with strings and punched out shapes of flowers and leaves, although I do have another idea or a way of cutting it now by hand which I will try to do later on in future but I still love this lattice pattern just the same. 

I have always loved the Martha Stewart Monarch Butterfly pattern....but I rarely use the butterflies on my cards. So much so that I thought it was a waste to have bought it and yet I don't always use it. I definitely need to use it more often. So for this card, it was really suitable for the butterflies and so I added a pair of antennas to each of the butterflies since they didn't have any.  I loved how they turned out in the end.

There are a lot of bling bling on the card itself......inside out. Anywhere I thought it would be suitable, I would paste them.  I'm having fun with them! Will use more of them in other cards soon. They are so fancy schmancy! Hahaha! :D Do check out the video of the card below. You'll be able to see how the lattice swing around with the butterflies :).

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

HB121

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!

Love you forever Baby

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As you can see I haven't been blogging much. I'm taking a break from work to concentrate on my health for a while. But recently I got a request and sometimes it's difficult to say no. So I did it anyways. Just this particular one. I would probably make other card designs in months to come but it would be something I would do because I love doing it in my free time and not because someone asks me to. Crafting keeps me sane. I heard it does for a lot of people. It makes us happy in ways we never thought it could. Agree? :)

This card is a combination of some of my older designs. A bit of this and a bit of that from a few of my handmade card designs and they all came together in one card. Personally I wouldn't have had it combined this way but since it's a request, so I just did my best to make it look good. Combination of colours have to match too and therefore certain designs with certain colours had to be changed to fit in.

You could see that I wrote most of the text on the card and also inside it because the person requesting it loved my handwriting so much. It can be a little tricky to write on the card because you can't afford to make any mistakes. One mistake means that you would have to redo the whole card. Scary! 

All the pop up envelopes have a tiny card in them with short messages. I think that adds an element of surprise for the receiver. I used to put only one tiny card in one of the envelopes but this time around I was requested to make 3 tiny cards with messages she came up with herself. I appreciated the new ideas from her and will try it if I think it suits the card. 

Another tricky thing was writing the glittered text on the die-cut heart shape paper. Can't afford any mistakes there either. But I love the texture and how it glitters when it hits the light.

It was nice to do quilling again and I must say making pop up cards is always a pleasure. I seriously need to make more of it so that I won't lose the skill I gathered over the years. I'm praying that I have the strength to do so soon. How I miss doing it all....it was really fun. :) Till then, do enjoy the video below.