Stranger Things birthday card

Mr 14 was off to a teen birthday party and noted that he and some others were going to make handmade cards for the birthday girl ... and see whose she liked best! Challenge accepted! All I know was that she liked Stranger Things. So what else but a pop up Demogorgon card. Just what every girl wants.

I googled "pop up flower card" and followed the instructions to create 7 flowers for the most common flower pop-up card you will find on the net. I printed a A4 page of a "Stranger Things" wallpaper for most of the "flowers" but created an 8-petal flower using Photoshop and this image to create the "petals" for the demogorgon:

The pop up 7-flower cards use an 8-petalled flower from which one petal is removed, and then two petals are overlapped, resulting in a 6-petalled flower. So my demogorgon ended up with 6 "petals" (flanges?) instead of the 5 as pictured. But who's counting?

The other 6 flowers I cut from the Stranger Things wallpaper.

If you make each flower from a 3 inch square, the whole "pop up" arrangement will fit in a traditionally sized greeting card - 4 x 6 inches (A6 envelope size). BUT make your demogorgon from a 4 x 4 inch square so it standout out more.

Finally, a search for "Stranger things" font led me to the Stranger Things Type Generator from which I produced a "Happy Birthday" in the Stranger Things style. Simply download or screenshot, print, cut, paste to front of card:

And voila!

Birthday card for a Star Wars Fan

I'd seen these on the interwebs and thought it would be fun to try. I used cardboard, my printer, and a short (bracelet length) glowstick. I set up the text and the lightsabre hilt (copied online) in Photoshop, printed and folded the card, cut a slot for the glowstick, and fastened it in place with stickytape.

Ta da! (Photos taken in the light and at night for full effect.)

Christmas Cards for the architect and builder

As readers may know, our house renovation was finished this year and we moved in. We love our new home, and I thought I would let the builder and architect know, in a Christmas card:

Is it that time again already?

A few months ago I went to the warehouse sale of a paper merchant in Perth, Western Australia, and, thinking ahead, bought a pack of 100 of these: (die cut Christmas Tree cards)

I probably wont use all 100 of them, so I decided to share my bounty via eBay. And next week the school is having a Christmas Market, and I thought I could sell some more, but maybe I should make up a few as examples of what you can do with them - hence:

 I also have lots of marbled paper left over from exercises such as this, which I (or you!) could use.

Back to the Lego Party

Turns out July wasn't too soon to start the party - I should have started A LOT earlier! Thanks to the school's Art Exhibition and Auction, things got set back a little. But we are back on track - with the invitations going out.

Thanks to All for the Memories for their great Lego invitation template. I downloaded it and adapted it - and here it is:

More inspired card making

After seeing this, at Next to Nicx's inspiring blog:

I knew I had the perfect idea for my Dad's birthday card. And here's how it turned out:

I didn't use Next to Nicx's template as it didn't print correctly for me. Instead I just printed text onto paper (making sure it was the right size for the card I had), put the printing over the card, and made holes through the paper and the card with a needle. I was lucky I had a carpet sample stuck on cardboard as the ideal surface to work on. (Although if you think the lines of text aren't quite level, that's either a trick of the eye, or the fact that I was doing it on my lap, sitting on a bed with two active children. Because when you are living in a one bedroom house with two children, things are bound to slip.) I then started embroidering. I didn't have embroidery thread (like 99% of my possessions, it's in storage), so I used sewing machine cotton, doubled over. And yes, it did take hours. But my Dad liked it!

The book of marbled papers comes in handy again

Silhouettes printed from internet images, cut, stuck to the rear of the patterned paper, cut again and stuck to card.

All I needed was a little inspiration

Yes, been a while since I've been here. But inspired by How About Orange's origami dress card (right), and a book on marbling paper being discarded by the local library (and full of full colour plates of marbled effects), I whipped these up:


(I think I could learn something from How About Orange's photo styling.....)

Cardmaking with Vintage Papercuts

See Vintage Papercuts for details of how to purchase.

Baby bunting

Two months, 3 friends, 4 (four) baby boys! Congratulations to Susan, Tina and Caroline. I made each of you a card:

(Spot the two little onesies, above?)

Christmas cards a five year old can make (with a bit of help)

Thomas wanted to make Christmas cards for some of his classmates and teachers, so we decided to make them together.

We've marbled paper before using the shaving foam and food dye method, so we decided to make marbled Christmas tree shapes on cards. This is how:

1. Marble your paper. Obviously for a Christmas tree, greens are going to dominate. This one had yellow swirls in the green, but red swirls were more seasonal (you just have to be careful not to swirl too much and end up with murk).

2. Grab a stencil - or a cookie cutter - in the appropriate shape, and trace around it.

3. Here's the cutter and the tree shape cut from the paper. Depending on how simple your shape and how dextrous your child, get them involved in cutting out.

4. Lots of Christmas trees.

5. Stick them to blank cards. We added a gold star at the top for a finishing touch.

6. Other uses for marbled paper, cookie cutters and blank cards. The dinosaur shapes are very useful for using up "murky" coloured marbelling, and make great boys' birthday cards.