Underwater

Seas The Day

| ullycatdesigns

I am always needing masculine birthday cards, so having an underwater sea turtle card that has some pop-up motion is a good thing.

This card uses a new pop-up mechanism in Karen Burniston’s September 2023 release – Stocking Pop-Up. I also used Karen’s Sea Animals, and a variety of her word and alphabet sets.

Cardbase: I started with an A5 (148 x 210mm or 5.875 x 8.25 inches) piece of heavy sea blue cardstock and folded in in half to form card that is (148 x 105mm or 5.875 x 4.125 inches) with a side fold. I had two sheets of the same A5 size printed underwater background. One I cut in half for the two panels inside. From the matching sheet I cut the decorative panels needed for the pop-up mechanism and used the remaining paper to cover the top half of the card front and the final two scraps to cover the card back. Any exposed areas on the outside of the card were covered with printed wave vellum.

Turtle Pop-Up: While the Stocking Pop-Up comes with a large stocking and Christmas decorations, you don’t need them to make the pop-up mechanism. I cut the large rectangular cover piece, the tombstone piece with baby tombstone and the triangular shaped piece with tabs from sea blue cardstock. I followed the directions on the packaging to assemble on to the card. (I practiced with some scrap cardstock first to get the placement right.) I assembled up to the point where I needed to glue the second tab of the large cover piece to the card. This so I could easily adhere the turtle to the mechanism.

Once I had the turtle from the Sea Animals die set assembled, I glued it to the large tombstone matching the upper edge of the turtle shell to the curve of the tombstone, so the arms and head of the turtle are above the tombstone. Next, I trimmed the tombstone down to fit the turtle’s shell.

Decorations: Plastic droplets were used on the card front along with trails of glitter gloss to simulate bubbles. A strip of vellum printed with waves adds to the sense of underwater motion.

The back of the card uses scraps of the underwater paper with a turtle swimming upward. A tiny shaker element is under the vellum piece with tiny yellow and orange fish and clear sequins.

Sentiments: Three different die sets were used to create “Seas the Day.” The Mini Alphabet was uses for “Seas.” The “the” comes from Word Set 11 and “Day” is from Word Set 17. Both the Happy Birthday die and its shadow die were used. The shadow was cut from shimmer cardstock and the “Happy Birthday” was coated with glitter gloss.

Envelope: The A6 white envelope has a school of fish stamped on its back flap in blue ink.

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

Materials Used:

Dies

Stamps

  • Papercraft Society – Sam Calcott’s Underwater & Nautical Box – Clear Stamps

Papers

  • Papercraft Society – Sam Calcott’s Underwater & Nautical Box – A5 Size Papers -Underwater Background, Wave Vellum and Blue(s) Cardstock
  • Craft Consortium – A4 Size Double-Sided 200gsm Papers – Gardeners Delight – Greens & Browns
  • Recollections – 8.5×11 White Gold Shimmer Cardstock
  • Dark Green Foil Cardstock
  • White, and Black Cardstock
  • A6 Envelope – White

Ink

  • Papercraft Society – Sam Calcott’s Underwater & Nautical Box – Mini Ink Pad – Aquamarine
  • Pigma – Mircon 01 Fine Tip Pen – Black
  • Nuvo – Aqua Shimmer – Glitter Gloss

Adhesives

Tools

  • Die Cutting Machine
  • Bone Folder
  • Stamping Platform
  • LDRS – Stampendable Stamping Tool
  • Stamping Cloth
  • Scissors

Miscellaneous

  • Kat Scrappiness – Sparkling Clear Droplets- Sampler Pack
  • Picket Fence Studios – Sequin Mix – Fishy Wishes

An Underwater Adventure

| ullycatdesigns

It’s Sneak Peek week for Karen Burniston’s February 2023 release!

Needing a card for a couple going on an oceanic ecological tour, I decided to create a luggage tag card with an underwater scene.

The card uses a variety of Karen Burniston dies including ones from her February 2023 release of beach themed dies.

For the card base I had some faux leather mermaid scales 8-inch wide ribbon that I die-cut two large tags from using the tag book pop-up die set. I next die-cut from some underwater background papers two more of the large tags. Having watched the assembly video for the tag book, I knew I needed to die-cut the hinge piece and attach it to the cardstock tags before I adhered them to the faux leather outer tags. (Because I wasn’t sure if the faux leather would adhere well with glue, I also used doubled-sided tape to attach the paper and fabric backed tag pieces.)

Wanting the jellyfish from the new sea charms set to look as if they were floating in the water, I cut the inside pivot mechanism from some medium weight clear plastic packaging. Because of its thickness the dies embossed the plastic but did not cut through the plastic. I used my surgical scissors to cut the mechanism out. Because of the see-thru quality of the plastic, I had to used double-sided tape to attach the inside panels together. To adhere the plastic to the paper lined inside of the card base, I used glue dots which look a little like air bubbles. (I adhered only one side of the mechanism until I was finished decorating the background with creatures and shells. Once satisfied that the background was complete, I adhered the remaining side of the mechanism.)

To decorate the card, I used the sea turtle from the sea animals set, the jellyfish, clam shell, crab and seahorse from the sea charms set, and the anchor, chain and “bon voyage” from the cruise charms set. The chain and jellyfish help hide the tabs the connect the pivot mechanism. (Because I used double-sided tape to adhere the decorations to the plastic, I had to push and prod the adhesives to hide behind the shapes, but some still sticks out. To made those bits of adhesive not interfere with the mechanism, I brushed anti-static powder over the areas to absorb the stickiness.)

On the front of the card, I used a spiral shell and jellyfish from the sea charms set along with the octopus from the ocean animals set and little sharks cut from the new beach borders die set. On the back of the card I cut a crosshatch rectangle panel using the first crosshatch rectangles set from leftover back ground paper and used the tiny sharks border again to edge it.

Because I hadn’t planned to add ribbon to the inside panel tags (the plastic was too thick to easily cut), used two ribbons -a narrow and a wide – on each of the card base’s two tags.

This card is to be hand delivered, so no envelope.

Thank you for reading this blog post. I hope it provides inspiration and joy. Please like and leave comments 😊

Materials Used:

Dies

Papers

  • Papercraft Society – Sam Calcott’s Underwater & Nautical Box – Background and Specialty Papers
  • Colored Cardstock Scraps
  • The Paper Studio – Clear Vellum For Printers
  • The Ribbon Boutique – Faux Leather 8-inches Wide Ribbon – Green/Blue
  • Clear Packaging – Medium Weight
  • Ranger – Tim Holtz – Distress Inks – Abandon Coral

Pens & inks

Adhesives

Miscellaneous

  • Die Cutting Machine
  • Piercing Tool
  • Scissors
  • Tweezers
  • Sponge Dauber
  • Kat Scrappiness – Telescopic Embossing Powder Tool with Retractable Brush
  • 3/4-Inch Wide Pale Blue Organza Ribbon
  • 1/4-Inch Wide Dark Blue Organza Ribbon