Wedding Card - Inside

I did the inside of this card first, and it took quite a while, both to come up with the idea and then to execute it.  The couple met while Salsa dancing, so I took that as my cue.  I did a card a while back with a pop-up curtain around a dancer and had the idea to do something similar here.

So, the first step was to google salsa dance silhouettes and pick a nice image to make a cut file for.  I found one and traced it into Silhouette's studio program.  Since it needed to be larger than the silhouette on the front of the card, I spent a long time making sure it looked good as a cut file, modifying all the lines and curves so it looked really good.

After getting the dancers, I realized my curtain idea was a bit lame and looked into making the dancers themselves the pop-up.  This was easier to learn how to do than I expected (here's the tutorial I adapted).  The execution, however, was hard.  I had to watch that video numerous times and redo steps several times to make it work.  I also decided to take out the perforated fold lines as the joins were so small I was afraid they would rip if I kept those in.

I cut out my pop-up, made some corrections, and cut it out again a bit smaller (so it wouldn't stick out of the card when folded).

My husband suggested doing the pop-up in gold to match the background and then add the black silhouette on the front to add contrast.  I think it was a good plan, as the non-shiny backing made a good 'sand' for the front of the card.  You can't see it very well in this photo, but the gold really shines  (I used Michael's brand, Recollections cardstock.  The metallic pack is cheap, includes 5 colours and are all very shiny on one side).

I glued the black dancers to the gold paper, then the entire pop-up to the backing paper, one side at a time to make sure it would open properly.  The rest of the card was just a matter of cutting a frame for the 2 stamp sentiment.  I curved the white edges and used an embossing edge punch on the black paper.  The sentiment was stamped with gold ink.   

Sorry, I used so many materials for this card I can't even remember them all, so I'm not doing a supplies list.

And here it is, the inside of my pop-up wedding card, the most difficult card I've done to date.

Beach Wedding Card - Outside

As promised, here's the first post detailing the wedding card I made from my husband's friends.  This is the most complicated card I've ever done.  And I think it turned out very well.

It was a beach wedding, so I googled 'beach wedding cards' to see what other people had done.  There are some fantastic cards out there.  I loved the various sandal cards but I actually did the (much harder) inside first, so the outside had to fit what I'd already made, and that meant a shaped card was out of the question.

Then I spotted a 3 silhouette print by Cherry Graphics called Wedding Favor Clip-art.  It's free to download, so I downloaded the image and then opened it in my Silhouette's Studio program.  I learned a while back how to trace images with the software (from one of their blog tutorials), the problem being that when images (like this one) are small or low resolution, your traced image isn't well defined.  So... I spent several hours making sure the lines were defined and the holes (which didn't show up in my trace) were back and properly defined.  Given how small the cut turned out, I probably needn't have worried about it so much, but it did look fantastic.

I originally made a backing paper for this using a pattern derived from the bridesmaids' dresses (with stripes of white, black, red, purple and light blue) but thought it looked too busy with the silhouette, so just cut it out of black and glued it on the back of the gold paper I used for the inside.  My husband thought the brown looked like sand, which seemed appropriate.

Here's the front of the card:

If you look at the original picture, you'll notice that I slanted the couple a bit too much, which is why my horizon is on a slant.  I ended up adding another line there so I had a properly aligned horizon line.  You can also see the little cuts in the palm tree trunks and leaves.  Yeah, that took a LONG TIME.

Tomorrow I'll explain how I did the inside.

Interactive Cards: Waterfall Card

This is the last card before my final review of the Interactive Cards book, edited by Tanya Fox.  My sample card is on the front cover of the book.  Waterfall cards have several pieces that flip open when the bottom pull tab is pulled.

I thought a waterfall card would make a wonderful wedding card.  The instructions were straightforward, though it's a time consuming card to make, requiring numerous pieces and care when putting it together.

Here's my card, two shots of the front and the inside.  (Please ignore the rainbow over the wedding couple, that's from my window crystal, not a feature of the card.)

So, where's the difficulty you ask?  You have to secure the pull tab and flip pieces to the page with a horizontal bar (my gold lattice edged paper).  That bar must be secured to the page, but not secured where the pull tab flits through (it has to be able to move freely and so is not attached to the page - anywhere).

In other words, this is the problem with this card:

The front slides around.  When I first made the card I had the glue on the bar too close to where the pull tab comes through so it didn't work quite right.  I adjusted that, so now it's too loose.  The book's instructions say to use brads to attach the bar, which could solve this, but only insomuch that it might make it less loose.  The floppiness is inherent in the card type, so there's no getting rid of that entirely, just making it less obvious.  Still, that's something I would expect to read in a 'tips' section of the book (most helpfully on the page with the card itself).

Supplies:
cardstock: Recollections, dollar store (black embossed paper)
stamps: Inkadinkado Wedding, Martha Stewart Hearts stamp and ink set
punch: Martha Stewart Arch Lattice
dollar store: jewel, ribbon