accordion cards

A String of Hearts

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This is a quick fussy cut string of hearts using Karen Burniston’s Landscape Rectangle Accordion die. The large red hearts and smallest dark pink hearts are from the Hearts-Crosshatch set while the medium size pale pink hearts and hearts with sentiments and arrow are from the Love Charms set. (I used a purple gel pen to highlight the candy heart sentiments.)

Below is a PDF file which you can download for a basic template of how to fussy cut the panels which are connected by the smallest hearts.

hearts-accordion-scan-of-prototypeDownload

For more Accordion Fold cards click here.

Blue Nose, the Pink Alligator

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As young children my father would tell my siblings and I, stories about Blue Nose the pink alligator. They generally began with “Have you ever seen a pink alligator with a blue nose?” We would discuss how an alligator could live in the American Midwest where there is snow and ice as well as hot humid summers and how the alligator came to be pink and received his blue nose.  This card tells that story.

I used Karen Burniston’s Fancy Label Accordion die set for the card base and the alligator from her Bayou Animals set as well as other elements from a mixture of her designs.

The alligator is ingeniously designed using three pieces – the body, the tummy pad and the teeth/eyes piece. I colored the eye on the teeth piece while still in the dies with a fine-tipped black marker. Then gluing the teeth onto the back of the alligator head and slightly opening the teeth. To get the half asleep red sunburnt alligator, I used the oval that came out of the eye and cut it in half and glued it over the eyes. I glued the tummy pad in place, but it is tightly snug between the arms even without glue.

For the sunbathing scene, I used striped paper cut into a rectangle and then fringed the short edges to make it look like a beach towel. The sun is from the Tropical Scene set.

For swimming in a snowy frozen river, I only used the head of the alligator with large spec glitter paper for the water and white glitter paper snowflakes cut with dies from the Sleigh and Winter Charms sets. The background is a coated blue glitter cardstock. The decorative frame is from a frame set KB had previously released with another company.

The last panel with Blue Nose, the pink alligator, used the waste from the decorative Fancy Flourish frame. (I save the tiny swirls to add to shaker element mixes for variety.) The sky is inked with a tiny make-up brush and blue ink.

The back panels explain the story and use scraps from the front. Stitch marks decorate the back frames and are made using the die as a stencil with a white gel pen.

Because of its bulk, the card can be mailed in an A7 envelope.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Echo Park Paper Co. – 6×6 Paper Pad Double-sided Papers – Paradise Beach by Michelle Coleman
  • Recollections – 12×12 glitter cardstock -deep blue
  • Heavy teal blue cardstock
  • Orange, yellow, and white cardstock scraps
  • White litter card scrap
  • Coated baby blue glitter cardstock

Ink

Miscellaneous

Bee Sweet

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BEE SWEET Front extended

Summer holidays are wonderful for their lazy days to be creative.

I had picked up several BoBunny paper pads at my Tuesday Morning store which included the BEE_UTIFUL YOU 6 x 8 paper pad. The collection features bees. I also picked up at the same time Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Collection Little Things Cling Stamps set which has a bee about to land.  Needless to say, I felt the need to get BEE-zy and created something from all this inspiration.

BEE SWEET inside detail

This simple Oval Landscape Accordion fold card was created using the Elizabeth Craft Designs Karen Burniston Pop It Ups die set 1108. I cut six frames with the inner oval taped to cut a narrow frame around the pivot oval.

BEE SWEETBack extended

Once all six frames were cut, I mixed the inner ovals patterned paper and taped them into the oval frames on the back side using white paper backed double-sided tape.  I left the backing paper on the tape until I was ready to adhere two frames together.  Once I had decided on the fronts and back of the frames and the order of the patterned paper on the frames, I placed double-sided tape on the backside frames (only the three patterned paper for the backside of the card.) Starting with my last frame on the right, I peeled off the backing paper on the two oval sections and carefully matched them up. I did not press the ovals together as I wanted wiggle room to remove the backing paper from a side of the outer frame, one-at-a-time, matching the sides together as best I could.  I did not put tape on the two tabs that would attach to the next frame.  I snipped off the two tabs of the back frame. Next I folded back the backing paper off just on the tape on the back frame of the middle section where the two tabs would adhere. I lined up the tabs and pressed them onto the tape of the middle section and started the process again to adhere the ovals first and then the outer frames of the middle frame section. Finally, I cut off the tabs on the first section before adhering the middle section tabs to the first frame as described before.

BEE SWEET inside wide

The ovals tabs were inserted between the sticky sections, aligned and firmly pressed together to adhere.  (See Karen Burniston accordion assembly video which shows a different shape, but the principles for accordion assembly are similar.)

BEE SWEET Front extended above

I decorated the ovals after I had assembled the frames so that I would not over embellish them.  To mail this card, I needed it to lie flat, but I wanted some dimension to the panels. Using small flower shapes cut from colored food boxes, I assembled six small flowers and two large flowers (see Supplies Used list for specific dies). On the Thinking of You frame, the flower and bee come from a Burts Bee’s box I had saved in my stash.

The last oval has a lacy oval of cream colored card stock to write a personal note on.

SUPPLIES USED:

Dies

Stamps:

Paper:

Miscellaneous:

Two Fish, One Fish

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Fish bowl 4

Two fish, one fish, is that a cat I see?

This is meant as a fun card. Ever since I saw the Die-cutting essentials magazine issue 36 Underwater Friends die set, I have been planning to make some sort of interactive card with it.

Fish bowl 2 - Copy

Finding the Karen Burniston Pop It Ups’ Oval landscape Accordion -1108 die set by Elizabeth Craft Designs gave me the idea on how to proceed to tell a story through a card.

Fish bowl 1 - Copy

First there are two fish. Then there is one fish. then there is a cat’s face watching intently.

Fish bowl 5 - Copy

Did the cat do anything beyond watching? What do you think happened?

Fishbowl-envelope

The cat’s face has a slit at the top and bottom so that it can slip off the pivot points and be signed or a greeting added.  I used Grafix Dura-Lar .005 Clear Film, an archival polyester film to die cut 3 of the accordion sections. I then die cut 6 of the blue cardstock accordion sections and then all the fish and greenery pieces. I used a combination of Tombow Aqua Mono Liquid Glue for around the blue oval frames because I could easily clean-up any messes with a damp paper towel. I used Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue for adhering the blue frames to the clear film because it needed to be a strong adherence for a sturdy frame.

 

 

 

Frustrating Glue

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IMG_5645I was working on this card with intricate borders to glue down and used Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue. I had a little glue ooze out from the delicate edges. Usually glue dries and you can flake it off, but this glue is still tacky after two weeks.

It ended up that I remade the card using 6-inch sheets of double-sided adhesive instead of glue.  First, I cut cardstock to the width of the border dies and then adhered one side of the adhesive sheet to the cardstock.  Then I ran the adhered cardstock through my Sizzix Big Shot machine to cut the border frames.  I cut scrap paper with dies between cuts of adhered cardstock to help remove adhesive from die. This method worked much better as well as being faster as there was no drying time needed between steps.

I used the double-sided adhesive sheet to adhere the light blue label with fish. See how smooth it is and no shiny adhesive showing.

In the future I plan to use this method of adhering my accordion cards using double-sided sheets/tape for all aspects rather than glue.

Supplies Used:

Karen Burniston  in cahoots with Riley and Company dies:        karenburniston.com

  • 1043 – Fancy Label Accordion
  • 1044 Fancy Flourish Frames

Scrapbook.com:       https://www.scrapbook.com/store/uc-adh-1036.html

  • Clear Double-Sided Adhesive Sheets 6×6 inch sheets

Fish die was in my swap bundle. Don’t know manufacturer.