Z-fold festive Christmas card using My Favorite Things

Hi everyone! Esther here. It's back to my day for showing you a card, and this week I've gone for something a bit more fancy that you might want to make for a special friend or family member.

It's been a while since I've done a Z-fold card, but ages ago I saw one in a shop and fell in love with it. I can't even remember where it was now, but I knew I wanted to try to make a handmade version, so here it is.

This is what it looks like from the front, and here's a look from higher up to show the layers better.

Although this is takes a little time to make, I think the effect is worth it. 

Let's talk about the front side of the card first, which has two "live" panels as shown below.

For the front panel, I used the largest die from the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Frames and partial die cutting to remove a large portion of that area. You could certainly use a rectangle die if you don't like partial die cutting - how about Lawn Fawn Large Stitched Rectangles, or My Favorite Things Inside & Out Stitched Rectangle STAX Dienamics. 

I used My Favorite Things Take The Stage Dienamic for the curtain, two pelment loops and tie back, and coloured the fabric with Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens. The presents are from two sets, My Favorite Things Beary Special Birthday and matching Dienamics, and My Favorite Things Merry Everything and matching Dienamics. 

The back panel was inked (use any dye ink of your preference) to create a night sky. The snow was stamped and heat embossed with the My Favorite Things Snowfall Background Stamp, and you could also use the My Favorite Things Snowfall Stencil, or new My Favorite Things Simply Snowflakes for larger flakes.

The reindeer are from My Favorite Things Merry Everything and cut with the matching Dienamics.

Okay, on to the middle panel which is created on the back of the card:

I used the window panes from the My Favorite Things Classic Window Dienamic four times in a grid to create a large paned glass window. The entire panel was coloured with the Beige Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pen to look like light brown wood.

A large vellum panel was glued onto the back of the panel, making sure to get glue on all the joining bits of card as well as round the edge. You need to be thorough with this, because the next step is to cut most of the vellum away from each pane using a craft knife to leave "snow" caught on the window panes, and you want those bits to be securely stuck down!

The cute Christmas bunny looking up at the reindeer and his teddy companion are from My Favorite Things Snuggle Bunnies and matching Dienamics (what, you thought those bunnies were just for birthdays?) and stuck down after colouring.

My final step was to cut a plain white curtain, pelments, presents, bunny and teddy, and stick those to the back of the ones that showed on the "wrong" sides for neatness. Obviously some of them have to stick backwards to be a mirror image, but just run them through your embossing folder with a thick sandwich and it'll flatten the raised cutting edge left behind from when you die cut them.

So there you go, a bit of work involved but hopefully someone special will love to receive this! Are you planning any fancier cards this year? I'd love to know what you've got in mind :)

Thanks so much for stopping by!

        

          

Building Houses

When I saw the Make Yourself at Home stamp set from MFT I thought it would be great for making new home cards, although there isn't a sentiment to go with that idea in the set, sometimes that's where I find the fun in crafting and using sets for something the designer didn't envisage.  With the addition of the Classic Window and the Brick Wall Cover-Up dies you can make a house and furnish the inside ;-)

I started with an A3 sheet of brown kraft card and cut it down to 18cm across the long length to get the height of my house before scoring at 12, 20, 32 and 40 cm to get the 4 walls plus a little left over to create a closing flap. You could use a sheet of 12x12 and create a slightly smaller house if you don't have large sheets of card.   I used the brick wall die to create a stencil from a scrap of the off cut card and used distress ink a blending tool to create the outer walls. I added the classic window die - I had to trim the centre from the kraft card by hand as I'd made my house too big to fit my die cutter - doh!   The new home sentiment was created using Owen's Alphabet from Lawn Fawn as it reminded me a little of those number tiles you see on house.   I created the roof with just a couple of scraps of grey card which I embosses some lines in using my score board and a ball tool.

Now comes the fun part - interior decorating!

I added a wooden floor with some wooden paper (our wooden veneers would be too thick and heavy) and selected an old 12x12 paper to make my wallpaper - make sure you line it up on each wall so it looks realistic.  I added another window on the inside to match the outer and added some green curtains.  A neat trick you can do with the curtains in the window die is once you die cut them, swap them over and put them back in the opposite die and that way you get the impression lines on both sides of your card so you see them through the window from the outside too.  You could add acetate to the window but I wanted people to be able to poke their fingers inside!

I stamped the furniture and coloured with copics and fussy cut as I didn't want the white lines as it would spoil the realism.  For the rug I used the die that would match the stamped image but just cut it from some patterned paper to get a patterned rug.  The mirror is made using the stamp on wood with the centre cut out and stuck over some mirri card.

You could go to town with this set and some empty shoe boxes and make DIY dolls houses for kids too - there are endless possibilities. 

If 3D is not your thing, then I have a more simple project this week too - a wild birthday card.

I love the animals in Avery Elle's new Wild Birthday set and wanted to get them all on a card at once so decided they'd been climbing the vines to create an animal tower!  Simple masking makes creating a stack really easy and then I just cut them out keeping a little white border like a die cut would have.  The vines were created using Paper Smooches Foliage 2  Having the scene flowing out of the frame and keeping the design to one side is a neat trick for adding impact on a CAS card.


NEWS FROM THE STORE

It's going to be a BIG week around here this week.   We will have:

• Waffle Flower's latest two releases and restocks tomorrow
• Wplus9 is in transit and I hope to have it by Tuesday
• MFT's new release early on Wednesday morning
• Altenew's Latest release as FINALLY shipped so providing there are no customs issues again we should have that this week too.
• Reverse Confetti and Lil' Inker Designs latest release are on order and should ship this week too.
• Concord and 9th's latest release plus restocks (including the scripty fonts) should ship by the end of the week for arrival the week after along with the Mama Elephant new release on the 15th.
• We are still waiting for Hero Arts to reach the UK - the distributor has now updated the expected delivery from "May" to "mid_June"