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CRX – Card Recipient Experience Part II

| ullycatdesigns

CRX – Card Recipient Experience is a topic I’ve written on before. (CRX-Card Recipient Experience) Today I am including some some free downloads to help you with your interactive cards being displayed as you intended them to be displayed.

Santa Delivers to the Tropics …………………………………………………………………… Red Four Square

You’ve made a beautiful easel or double easel card that you fold into its envelope and mail off to your friend. When your friend opens the envelope and tries to open the easel card as if it were a tent fold card, it makes no sense or worse the card gets torn. To alleviate this problem why not include a small drawing of how the easel card opens and stands in the envelope as the first things your friend will see when they open the envelope.

easel-card-sheetDownload

Autumn Birthday teepee card

Teepee cards can be hard to figure out how the are to be displayed without an image of the finished card.

teepee-card-instruction-sheetDownload

House Luminary

Four panel cards with elements to allow light to shine through such as a house luminaria card can be displayed several ways – as a zig-zag or as a box around a battery powered candle.

house-luminaria-1Download

Split Slider -Vertical………………………………………… Split Slider – Horizontal

split-slider-crx-sheet-1Download

I hope this helps you as you go forward with your interactive card making. Please like and write a comment to let me know what other types of CRX issues you’ve had.

© Sue Small-Kreider 2021

Victorian Trim House Luminaria

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Warm and cozy is this small brick house with its white ornate Victorian trim as light streams through its windows. This is the third house luminaria in my blog posts using a battery powered candle.

Made with Impression Obsession’s house die set, this 3-inch tall by 2 3/4 inch square has slight modifications made to original two-dimensional design. I cut two of the brick house die as well as two partial die cuts with the same die to make the side walls. I cut a total of eight square windows and one arched window as well as two doors. The L shaped eaves die I cut twice from white cardstock and the twice more from thicker scrap cardstock. The ornate trim pieces I cut two from regular cardstock, but the ornate porch roof piece I cut once from regular cardstock and twice from thicker cardstock. I also cut two pieces of vellum 2 ¾ inches x 1 inch and five additional 1 inch squares of vellum.

Partial die cutting of side walls by placing die over the edge of cardstock.

I made two templates from purple scrap cardstock of the front and side of the house and using window die cuts I fingered out the window placement. Once I had the placement, I traced around the window frames with a pencil.  I cut the windows with the dies. Using the templates, I traced the window placement on to my red die-cut pieces and cut them out with a craft knife and metal ruler cutting inside the pencil lines. For the door I only cut out a rectangle where the windowpanes would be. Next, I glued the vellum pieces to the back of the red sides of the house.   

Once the vellum is adhered to the back of the window cut outs, you can turn the house pieces with their fronts facing up and decorate them by gluing on the window frames and doors. I used a gold gel pen to make the doorknobs.

For the L shaped eave pieces, I glued the regular white cardstock to the thicker scrap cardstock. I did similar for the porch roof piece, but I glued two of the thicker scrap cardstock pieces together before adhering the top regular cardstock piece.

To assemble the house sides, I laid all the pieces side by side and tape them together on the back side.

The roof is a 5 inch by 3 inch rectangle of brown cardstock stenciled with a stencil in my stash with Distress Ink and folded in the middle.  I taped the roof to inside of my house for stability.

The house and roof will fold to mail in an A2 envelope if the white eaves pieces are trimmed to fit by an 1/8 inch.

Thank you for reading about this little house. Please like and leave a comment. 😊

Links to other house luminaria and houses.

Also see the series of “A Week of Christmas Houses”

Day 1 – From Our House to Your House

Day 2 – Santa is Coming

Day 3 – A Baby is Coming

Day 4 –Keeping the Home Fires Burning

Day 5 – Red Four-Square

Day 6 – Santa Delivers to the Tropics

SUPPLIES

Dies

Ink

Paper

Miscellaneous

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

| ullycatdesigns

Sometimes you don’t need to answer that question.

This little artist trading card’s inspiration came from the Rubberneck sentiment stamp, which was stamped, and heat embossed in white on a My Mind’s Eye paper scrap that was die-cut using a stitched die.

The chicken is from an animal die set by Karen Burniston. All parts were cut from scraps in my stash – textured, off-white card for body. The eyes and red wattle are marker through the die stencil slots. To add definition, the edges of the body were distressed with black soot ink.

Hope this ATC makes you smile.

SUPPLIES

Dies

Stamps/Stencils

Ink/Embossing Powder

Paper

Miscellaneous

Stable Happy Mail

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7 Stable-front-opened

Everyone likes Happy Mail and this one is made for a family of horse lovers. After making a z-fold card using a gate and fencing, I envisioned this horse paddock card.

5 Stable-folded envelope

The card is designed to fit folded into a #10 slimline envelope.

I laid-out the fence first on a 2 ½ inch x 12-inch strip of textured cardstock folding it long-ways in half and then scored at 3 inches and 9 inches. Draw pencil lines for the fence posts at: 1/4 inch, 1 7/16 inches, 1 9/16 inches, 2 7/8 inches, 3 inches, 3 1/8 inches, 4 7/16 inches, 4 9/16 inches, 5 7/16 inches, 6 1/16 inches, 7 7/16 inches,, 7 9/16 inches, 8 7/8 inches, 9 inches,, 9 1/8 inches, 10 7/16 inches, 10 9/16 inches, and 11 ¾ inches. Next, I evenly spaced three boards long-ways and colored in the spaces to be cut out. Using an Xacto craft knife and metal ruler I cut out the colored spaces on the folded over strip measuring 1 ¼ x 12 inches. (I recommend coloring in the cutout spaces as it gets very confusing, and like me, you have to start over again.)  (If you have the Karen Burniston Farm Edges die set or another fence die set, you could piece together the fence rather than cutting it as I did.)

3 Stable-Fence cut

The last cutting is to trim one half of the endposts off (See photo). Once the fence is done being cut, glue the wrong sides together to form a sturdy fence. I used distress inks to color the fence.

4 Stable-Fence endpost

The stable doors are sized to fit the Karen Burniston horse die. I cut three horses and decorated them differently using a black fine tipped pen and watercolor pencils. (Watch the assembly video for decoration ideas and tips). The doors are loosely based of the retired Stampin’ Up barn door set. I cut pieces of woodgrain paper to form the trim pieces and glued. The sliding door hardware is from the Stampin’Up set. Because the door is smaller than the die set door, I had to do a modified cutting of the slots that the door slides on.  I followed the door assembly method described in this video by The Creativity Cave.

6 Stable-front-unopened

The sentiments are from the barn door set. You will need to cut two pieces of wood grained paper for the stable at 4 x6 inches. Once you have cut the door slots out of the front piece, and assembled the door, you can adhere the backing piece with the grain sided facing the back side of the front. (The grain will camouflage the slot cuts. Make sure you don’t glue your acetate door mechanism to the backing piece. Test your door before the glue dries if you need to make adjustments. Stamp and cut out your sentiments and adhere behind the doors. Glue one horse head to be peaking out from the stall door and the glue door onto stable.

7 Stable-front-opened

Glue the fence endposts to the front of the stable once the doors and decorations have been added to the front of the stable. Add the horses to your paddock by gluing one to the back of the front fence and the other by using a strip of clear plastic from packaging (It needs to be sturdier than acetate.) to glue the acetate in place, first glue one side the inside of the side fencing. Fold the paddock flat to one side and see where the plastic strip folded tab ends up on the fence and, then glue to that spot.

You can write your personal message on the back of the stable.

Supplies

Stamps/Dies

Inks/Watercolors

Paper

  • Textured 12 x12 off white card stock from my stash
  • All other papers were from my scrap bin

Miscellaneous

Garden Gate and A Curious Kitty

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Garden Gate -Front Cat -bird

An idyllic summer morning with birds singing, a kitten roaming about the garden and the prospect of a cup of tea and good long chat with a friend are what this card reminds me of when I see it.

My friend challenged me to make something special with my new Stampin’ Up stamp and die sets. (So this card is for you, Donna.)

I had seen on Pinterest cards using the Garden Gateway die to create a z-fold card with a fenced in garden. This was my inspiration and starting point.

Garden Gate -side open CU

Fence and Gate: I cut two of the arched gateway and four of just the garden gate without the arch.  Using a craft knife, I trimmed off the cross-piece sections on the small gates and the middle hinge to get the gate to look like a fence. Next, I tried laying out the fence knowing it had to be 11 inches (278mm) long because my card base was 4 inches by 11 inches (102mm x278mm).  I had scored and folded my card base in the middle and then the left side I folded in half to make the z-fold. I needed the gate to be right of the front quarter-fold section on the card base. I wanted the folded corner of the fence at the right of the gate to be at the mid-section of the timed gate. I cut and pieced the fence gluing large end posts over large end posts. I trimmed off the far-right end post as it was too long. The arch seemed to bend too easily, so, I took the second arched gate and glued it to the back of the fence and gate for added strength.

Garden Gate -side open

Card Base Background: I stamped the tree and bistro table and chairs from the Joanna Sheen stamp set and tried a grass stamp with green distress ink but ended up using the grass stencil in the Joanna Sheen set to do the grass. Using a fingertip dauber sponge, I smoothed out the grass. The clouds on the blue cardstock were made with a white Distress Crayon that was slightly blurred with a water brush.

Garden Gate -Front open CU

Garden: I stamped the flowers, kitten and bird on the leftover white cardstock I had leftover from die-cutting the gate and fence pieces. Using watercolor pencils and a waterbrush, I colored the stamped images.  After getting the fence glued together and the folds made to create the garden, I glued the fence sections to the front and back of card base, making sure the free standing fence sections don’t accidentally get glued to anything. I decorated the outside of the fence with flowers making sure the gate could open. For the flowers inside the garden, I attached them with folded pieces of clear acetate. The placement of the inside flowers needs to be done so the card will fold flat so using glue to adjust their placement is useful.

Garden Gate -Front folded

Sentiments: I stamped the sentiments last, using a blue ink. I tried to center the two sentiments on the back so that they were framed by the arch of the gate when closed or opened.

Garden Gate -Envelope Folded

Envelope: The back flap of the envelope was stamped first with the bird stamp in blue on a sticky note, cut out and stuck as a mask over the stamped bird on the envelope flap. Next, I stamped small flowers over the masked bird in green. Once the mask was removed, it looks like the bird is standing amid the flowers.

Garden Gate -Envelope CU

Supplies

Stamps

Inks/Watercolors

Paper

Miscellaneous

Happy Hello

| ullycatdesigns

Happy Diamond -inside

Experimenting with new folds and materials, discovering items hidden in your stash and having the internet go down all played a role in the making of this triple diamond gate fold card.

Backgrounds

When our internet went down one morning, I decided to experiment with my gelli plate to make some back grounds. I rounded up all my red inks and thought to play that way, but in the process of looking for the gelli plate, I found some forgotten rubber stamps on a roller. I had to try them out and before I knew it I had stamped all my cardstock. I did try to make some background prints using the backs of the stamped sheets. I only opened up one ink in a watermelon color.

Also in the morning I had made a bunch of washi tape flowers from cut petals from Park Lane and the V&A Collection, layering them onto wax paper to use at some future time.

Happy Diamond -Front

In the afternoon, I decided to try and remember how Sam Calcott on her Mixed-Up Crafts You-Tube video had made her version of a triple diamond gate fold card. Without the internet, I had to improvise, but with only one mistake, I figured it out. The key is to divide the long ways portion of card into 10 even rectangles, but I advise to watch the video for exact details and how to fold. (I used 8.5 inches x 11 inches paper. Sam used 12 inches x12 inches paper)

Happy Diamond -Back

Once folded, I began to decide on decorations. The one rolled stamp design was just the right width of the card folds, so I cut the diamond shape first by tracing it on the paper.  Using the scrapes of the stamped paper I decorated the washi tape flower centers and the belly band. For the “Hello” sentiment, I cut down a printed tag to fit.

There is space on the back side of the diamond to write a personal message.

Hoping this card brightens your day. 😊

Materials Used:

Stamps

Inks

Papers

Miscellaneous

May Flowers

| ullycatdesigns

Blue teacup-inside-sideCelebrating Mother with May flowers is a tradition. I was happy to see that Anna Griffin’s new teacup die set includes the ability to emboss flowers onto the edges and side of the cup and saucer.

This was my first try at using the new die set as well as some of Anna’s sentiment stamps. The teacup goes together easily following the enclosed instructions. I embossed the cup and saucer first using an embossing mat/plate and then die cut all the pieces.

Blue teacup-front

By using a preprinted card base from a card kit by Punch Studio that has been in my stash for a while, along with some of the butterfly toppers and pink flatback gems, the front of the card came together quickly. The inside paper is from Graphic 45. I cut two pieces so as not to cover the fold and used a green marker to color the inside edges of the card as a border to the floral paper.

Blue teacup-inside

I ended up heat embossing the decorative border on the gold metallic sentiment base with clear embossing powder. I learned that the metallic card I used is heat sensitive and had a minor curling effect happen.

To fill the cup I used flower embellishments from Anna Griffin as well. This vintage teacup card is perfect for celebrating Mother’s Day.

Wishing all mothers, a Happy Mother’s Day.

 

Materials:

Dies

Stamps

Papers

Miscellaneous