Trains

Choo-Choo Train Birthday Card

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This card was made for CRAFT ROULETTE #276 whose parameters included an easel card, rainbow colors, western element, and black and white image. I chose to make a shaped, slimline easel card using dies by Anna Griffin and Sue Wilson.

Watch the process video to see how I made this card.

Cardbase:  The cardbase is cut from 110 lb. white cardstock using Anna Griffin’s Antique Train Slimline Easel dies to cut out the two cardbase pieces. Rainbow striped paper was added to the card base and the excess was fussy cut off. (You could die cut the piece again if you don’t like to fussy cut.)

Train:  The detailed train image is cut in black and glued to the shaped outline of the train before it is attached to the card base.

Sentiment:  Cut three sets of Sue Wilson’s “Happy Birthday” from the scraps of white cardstock used for the cardbase. Glue the layers together. Let dry under a paperweight to have the dry flat.  Adhere to cardbase to be used as the easel stop.

Envelope:  The card fits into #10 business envelope (4.125x 9.5-inches) which was stamped with “HBD” on its back in red ink using the Craft Roulette Funn Sentiments #01 stamp set.

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Thank you for experiencing this blog post.

I hope this inspires you and makes you smile.

Please like and leave comments 😊

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Disclaimer: Karen Burniston products are provided free of charge by the manufacturer for review and use. All other items were personally purchased. Compensated affiliate links used where or when possible, meaning I will receive a small percentage commission from these manufacturers at no cost to you. This will allow me to add more content to my YouTube channel and help out a lot. Thank you.

Materials Used:

Dies

  • Anna Griffin – Metal Dies – Antique Train Slimline Easel
  • Creative Expressions – Craft Dies by Sue Wilson – Noble Expressions – Happy Birthday

Stamps

  • Craft Roulette – Clear Stamps – Funn Sentiments #01

Papers

  • Mrs. Sparkle & Co. Paperie – 5.5×7.5-inches Paper Pad – Rainbow
  • Scrapbook.com -8.5×11-inch 110lb Cardstock – White
  • The Paper Studio – 8.5×11-inch 80lb Cardstock – Black
  • #10 Business Envelope – Kraft

Ink

  • Memento – Fade Resistant Dye ink – Rose Bud
  • Pigma – Mircon 005 Fine Tip Pen – Black

Adhesives

Tools

  • Die Cutting Machine
  • Paper Trimmer
  • Bone Folder
  • Scissors
  • Paper Masking Tape
  • We R Memories – QuickStick
  • Stamping Platform
  • LDRS – Stampendable Stamping Tool
  • Stamping Blocks used as paperweights
  • This Calls For Confetti – It’s No Secret Anti-Static Powder Wand

Birthday Train

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A lovely summer day in a Tennessee valley and the zoo animals are on a train outing to celebrate someone’s birthday.

This card uses Rubbernecker’s Animal Train slimline paper pad, some foam dots and a piece of clear packaging to create a cute interactive birthday card.

Cardbase: Cutting a 7 1/2 by 8 3/4-inch rectangle of white cardstock score and fold at 3 3/4-inches to make a folded cardbase of 3 3/4 by 8 3/4-inch. Glue a scenery page to card back panel.

Score and fold at 3 3/4 inches
Card back

Slider Mechanism: Take a background scenery page from the paper pad. On the back side draw two lines in pencil at 7/8-inches from the bottom edge and the second at 2 5/8-inches from the top edge. (You may need to adjust the width of the slot to accommodate the height of your foam dots. My measurements are for 1/4-inch foam dots.) Measure 1-inch from the right side (backside right) and draw a line connected the previous two lines. On the left back side, measure 3/4-inch to connect the earlier lines. Use a craft knife and straight edge (metal ruler) to cut out slot. Save cut-out piece.

Center the scenery page over the front panel of cardbase. Mark the corners of the page on cardbase and trace the inside of the slot with a pencil. Using a circle punch cut a thumb hole (half circle) on the left edge centered off the penciled slot markings.

Glue the slot cut-out piece over the pencil markings on card front. Cut a piece of clear packaging that is 1/2-inch wide and at least 9-inches long. Lay the plastic piece over the slot cut-out. Add foam tape around the plastic leaving the thumb hole side open. (Make sure tape does not extend beyond the corner pencil marks as it will show when the scenery page is adhered on top the foam tape.) Once Scenery page is attached, remove plastic strip and use hole punch to cut thumb hole into scenery page. Insert plastic strip into slot and test for ease of movement. Assemble train and follow directions in Train section to attach it to slider plastic arm.

Train: Cut out train with sharp detail scissors. (There are coordinating dies that you can purchase from Rubbernecker if you do not like fussy cutting.) The trick to fussy cutting is to move the paper through the scissors and not the scissors through the paper. For the engine window, poke a hole and cut from hole to the corners and then cut out the window.

Glue the train together overlapping the hook-up bars. Cut out animals and flag. Glue flag to last car.

Position train above the slot with the flag just peeking over the card edge. Make sure plastic strip is pushed to the back stop of the slot. Add foam dots to plastic inside slot positioned two to the center of each train car and engine.

With plastic strip still pushed to back stop, trim plastic strip to left card edge. Cut a piece of coordinating green from paper pad to a 3/4-inch wide by 3-inch strip. Fold strip in half and attach to plastic strip with double-sided tape. (You may have to trim and taper the ends of the green strip to fit into the slot track depending on where your foam tape is.) With a black permanent marker, draw an arrow on the green tab to indicate the direction to pull.

Add a plastic strip to the train chimney and attach with a glue dot a fussy cut cloud of smoke. Glue animals onto the train. Peel off the foam dots’ backing paper and attach the train to the slider arm.

Sentiments: Stamp “Happy Birthday” on to a piece of white cardstock and fussy cut a cloud shape around it. Position the cloud on foam dots so that the smoke cloud on the train does not become a catchpoint with the birthday cloud when the slider is pulled open. Decorate the sky with remaining images of smoke clouds, bird and butterfly, using foam squares and glue dots. The inside sentiment is a computer generated one which can be downloaded below.

wishing-great-adventuresDownload

Envelope: The back flap has an additional animal fussy cut and glued to it.

Thank you for reading this blog post. I hope this inspires you and makes you smile. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Stamps

  • Rubbernecker Stamps – Clear Stamps – Sea Set -3207

Papers

  • Rubbernecker – 3.5×8.5 Paper Pad – Slimline – Animal Train
  • White Cardstock
  • Clear Plastic Packaging
  • #10 Business Envelope – White

Ink

  • Catherine Pooler – Premium Dye Ink – Party Collection – All That Jazz
  • Sharpie – Permanent Marker – Ultra Fine Tip – Black

Adhesives

Tools

  • Die Cutting Machine
  • We R Memories – Scoring Board and Trimmer
  • Stamping Block
  • Craft Knife
  • Detail Scissors
  • Circle Punch – 3/4-inch
  • Metal Ruler
  • Pencil

Train Ride Through The Canadian Rockies

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It’s the Karen Burniston Design Team March 2023 Challenge and the theme is Vacation!

I’ve always wanted to take the train from Vancouver through the Canadian Rocky Mountains and this card pays tribute to that train trip using Karen Burniston’s Twist Panel Pop-Up and Train Pivot Panels.

First, I watched the assembly videos for Train Pivot Panel and the Twist Panel Pop-Up. (If I had been paying attention, I would have realized that when the train pivot panels installed on the twist panel mechanism would need a card base that has 6-inches from the fold to its outer edge. Hence my train engine juts out from the card bottom by 3/4-inch, and I had to hide it with ribbon.)

When adding the twist panel mechanism to card larger than 5-inches, I use a metal ruler and a craft knife to cut the ends of the arms free and I glue additional patterned paper behind the mechanism to hide the openings that the arms make.  My patterned papers have 3-inch-tall scenes that I cut to go inside the card at the top and bottom of the twist mechanism to added depth for mountains the train is going through. The actual train panels are cut from coordinating paper of fir trees.

While the Canadian Rail trains are diesel trains rather than steam, I tried to make the train have the Canadian flag colors and I found a tiny red maple leaf sequin in my shaker elements stash. The train track comes from the Train Elements die set.

For the outside of my card, I created some maple leaf paper on my computer and printed it. The “Enjoy the ride” sentiment was released by Karen Burniston as part of the train themed dies. I used her Mini Alphabet to finish the sentiment. (I find using removable paper tape to line up the lettering works well with a t-ruler.)

For the card back, I used a vintage Canadian railway sticker and a heart sticker to hide the ribbon end.

A piercing tool (an ice pick) was used to poke the holes for the ribbon.

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

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Craft Consortium – Premium Quality Papers – 12” x 12” – In The Forest by Clare Therese
  • Colored cardstock scraps
  • Copy Paper
  • Paper Lane – 5 x7 white card

Inks

  • Sharpie Permanent Marker –Fine Point – Black

Miscellaneous

  • Neutral PH Adhesive by LINECO
  • Fine-Tip Glue Bottle
  • Quickstik Too
  • Scrapbook.com – Double-Sided Adhesive 1/4 Inch Tape
  • Die Cutting Machine
  • Computer and Printer
  • Craft Knife
  • Piercing Tool
  • Pencil
  • Dollar Tree – Craft Clips
  • Removable Paper Tape
  • Red Organza 5/8 Inch Wide Ribbon
  • Kat Scrappiness – Shaker Elements – Shimmering Fallen Leaves

COUNT DOWN TO SANTA – PART 2

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Counting down to when Santa comes can be a fun for little ones and older ones with a tree of ornaments that are stored in their numbered drawers until their day to be opened and hung on their drawer knob. The drawers are big enough to hold a treat, note or gift card as well as their ornament. The large star is for December 25 and is a 2-inch box that opens from the top to reveal a larger gift.

The tree is made with Karen Burniston’s newly released Slider Box die set and decorated with her Winter and Holiday Charm sets. Her pivot train and gift pivot cards form the tree base. The star box is based on Karen Burniston’s crosshatch squares.

I used 16 sheets of 12×12 inch sheets of 80lb. textured cardstock to construct the slider boxes and the layer bases.

Construct the slider boxes as shown in assembly video, except use a metal brad instead of ribbon for the drawer pull. (I sprayed the brads green before assembling drawers.)

Once all 24 slider boxes and drawers are assembled, they will be assembled in to six layers of four boxes each, using the crosshatch rectangles in three sizes.

Cut four rectangles from each of the three largest crosshatch dies. I pinched the center points on each side of the rectangles to line them up as shown in the photograph. Glue together each pair.

Using a grid work surface, Line up the four boxes with drawers opening away from the crosshatch rectangles. Apply glue to the edge of the rectangle and the box bottom. Place a weight such as a stamping block or cell phone on top of boxes until the glue is set. (I cooked dinner and did a load of laundry while gluing the six layers together and letting them dry enough to move.)

Play with the positioning of the layers before you glue them. I used the crosshatch borders to help me know where to place glue. The bottom layer will have the boxes spaced the furthest out while the top layer will have the boxes almost butted up against each other.

For the tree base, make four pivot panel cards – two trains and two gifts. For the base fold an 11 x 4.25-inch piece of heavy cardstock in half and scored the long top edge at 3/8 inches. Snip the scored tab at the center fold. Assemble pivot cards and then glue to the tree bottom forming an “X”.

Make 24 ornaments from the winter and holiday charm sets. (I made four of six different designs and colors.)

Download the box and star tip patterns. Cut six of the 2-inch crosshatch squares, one of the box pattern and 12 of the star tip patterns.

Download pdf patterns

pointed-star-pattern-ssk-2021109Download

Glue two of the star tip pieces together to form a 4-sided pyramid. Repeat with the rest of the star tip pieces to create 6 pyramids. To assemble the box, glue crosshatch squares to sides of box while flat. Glue only “TAB X”s to adjacent square edges to form a box with a hinged lid. Attach star tips to box with glue or double-sided tape.

Die cut the 3-inch crosshatch square from green to cover the hole on the top layer. Mark the center and die cut using the smallest crosshatch square die, a square in the center of the large square. Glue large square over hole on top layer. Added glue to bottom tip of star and slide into hole in the top.

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Fun Stampers Journey – 8.5×11 Cardstock – Pumpkin Bread – CS-0098
  • American Crafts – 12×12 Heavy Weight Glitter Cardstock – Sunflower – 71429
  • American Crafts – 12×12 – 80lb. Weave Cardstock – Evergreen – 71056
  • Colored, Foiled and Print Cardstock Scraps

Pens

  • Farber Castell – Pitt Artist Pen – Black India Ink – 199
  • Sharpie Marker – Medium Tip – Black

Miscellaneous

Mountain Train Ride

| ullycatdesigns

There is nothing so relaxing as a train ride through the mountains. Seeing the pine trees at the higher elevations and the babbling streams in the gullies. Hearing the chug-chug-chugging of the steam engine and experiencing the darkness of a mountain tunnel coming back into the sunlight.

In my challenge to myself to see how many different themed cards I can make with Karen Burniston’s new Fireplace die set; I decided on a mountain train tunnel with the mouth of the tunnel using the fireplace mechanism’s opening. All the dies used are by Karen Burniston.

I had made multiple train cars and engines for an earlier project. (Watch the assembly video for the trains.) The train tracks are from a train elements set and I cut 4 of them to have enough pieces to form the track I needed for the front and inside of the card. For the smoke from the smokestack, I turned the smallest cloud from the Outdoor Scene set on its side and glued inside the stack.

The front of the card uses curving hillside with large pine trees from the Outdoor Scene set and the treeless curving stitched edger from the Long Nature Edges set for the foothills. I shaded the hillside tope edges with a pale brown ink.

For the card’s sentiment, I double cut the large words “Enjoy” and “ride” once from brown and again from black so that I could offset them to create a shadow. The oval cuts out the word “THE” so it is backed with a scrap of black.

The inside of the card requires some practice laying out to get the right placement of the mountains, so they won’t stick out of the card when closed. (Watch the fireplace assembly video before laying out and assembling.) I used scrap pieces of brown lightweight cardstock to cut my crosshatch ovals. (Largest oval die in set was used.) I cut off the bottom of the ovals to have varying heights. The largest oval I turned over on the back, traced the mechanism opening onto and then die-cut the opening using the second to smallest to fit inside the penciled opening.

The smaller ovals are glued to the sides and behind the oval with the tunnel opening. I then adhered the fireplace mechanism as shown in assembly video and glued the mountains onto mechanism matching up the openings. Next, I pieced together the train tracks to come out of the tunnel and near the side of the mountains. Using the pop-up strip from the Fireplace die set and the two angled pop-ups from the Mini Pops set, played with placement of the pop-ups with the train pieces to set spacing.  Glue the pop-ups first and once their glue has set, then adhere the train pieces. (I bent the pop-ups at their original scored folds, but you might play with other folds and or strips to get a more realistic alignment of the train cars.)

The babbling stream is created from strips of patterned paper cut with the Long Nature Edges curving stitched edger. The diagonal placement adds drama to the card and space in the corner to write a personal message.

Leftover pieces from the train track as well as pieces from other card projects complete the back of the card.

As is my habit, I decorated the envelope back flap with additional train pieces to hint at what’s inside.

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

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Colored, coated and glitter cardstock and patterned paper scraps
  • American Crafts – 5 x7 Kraft card & A7 envelope

Inks

  • Green fine-tipped marker
  • Ranger – Tim Holtz -Distress Ink – Antique Linen

Miscellaneous

Getting MORE From YOUR Dies

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Just an heads up that in a few weeks I am doing a series on different ways you can use Karen Burniston’s new Fireplace Die set that you can see in this Sneak Peek photo of all the new dies that will be available September 5, 2022.

On September 12 will be a spooky room scene card using the fireplace as intended.

On September 13 will be a doghouse scene using the fireplace front and mechanism.

On September 14 will be a fun train tunnel scene card using the fireplace mechanism.

I hope you will follow me as I explore some of the creative and interactive things you can make with Karen Burniston Pop-Up dies.

A Train Lover’s Father’s Day

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This is a card for the vintage train lover in your family. It has a steampunk meets art deco vibe.

Using a new die set by Anna Griffin, the Antique Train Slimeline Easel Dies, it came together quickly using just two types of cardstock, one sentiment die, a fine-tipped permanent marker and some gold glitter drops.

The die set cuts the easel base and the shadow outline of the train as two separate dies. I used a double-sided 180gsm weight cardstock from metal textures collection by Craft Consortium for these two pieces. The train is cut from Hunkydory’s oxidized metals collection of 220gsm mirror cardstock. Using the fine-tipped permanent marker to color the roofs and stacks of the mirror card train, I found I could also color a scrap of the mirror card and then cut the wheels and cow-catcher grate for added dimension.

After gluing the train to the gray shadow piece, I filled-in much of the void spaces on the train with the marker. With the train flat, I used some gold glitter glue or drops to create the wheel center caps.

The sentiment was cut three time – one in mirror cardstock and twice from thick black cardstock. The three layers were glued together and the words “Happy” and “Day” were colored with the black permanent marker.

To assemble the card, the easel base was folded on its score lines and glue placed on the long thin tab. The shadow backed train was then positioned over the card base centering the train within the card base’s outline. Pressure was applied to the tab to adhere the train back to the easel. The sentiment was glued on to the inside of the card once the position was established to have it hold the train in its open easel position.

The card fits into a #10 business envelope which has been stamped with VersaMark watermark ink using a bowler hat and sentiment “Hat’s off to you” stamps from Colorado Craft Company.

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

Materials Used:

Dies

Stamps

Inks & Pigments

  • VersaMark – Watermark Stamp Pad
  • Sharpie Permanent Marker – Ultra Fine Point- Black

Papers

  • Craft Consortium – The Essential Craft Papers – 12” x 12” – Metal Textures
  • Hunkydory – Mirri Card Specials – Oxidised Metals Collection – A4
  • #10 Business Envelope – Brown

Miscellaneous

Ride the Birthday Train

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train ride- inside

Get on board the Birthday Train!  This was my first attempt at using Karen Burniston’s Train Pivot Panels and companion Train Elements.  Having made other of KB’s pivot panels I found it an easy assembly. (If you haven’t made a pivot panel card before, please look at her assembly videos.)

train ride- front

I used bright primary colors for the card using lots of scraps bits for the words and tiny decoration pieces. “Enjoy” and “ride” are double cut from red and blue papers and off-set to give a shadow effect.  The card base is from Karen Burniston’s Circle Tag Book Pop-up.  The red grosgrain ribbon hides the tiny portion of train’s “cow catcher” and tracks that show beyond the rounded edge.

train ride- inside wide

Two pearl-like domed dots were used for the railroad crossing sign.(I removed these dots and replaced with red circles of cardstock when I sent the card to a two year old because of the fear he would try to eat them.) Bears are from KB’s Winter Animals die set.

Watch a Video of card

SUPPLIES USED:

Dies

Paper:

  • Cardstock scraps from my stash including black glitter cardstock for wheels

Miscellaneous: