Little Elf Tree

My card today was totally inspired by the snowman card by Vera Rhuhay on the Mama Elephant blog this week - I really liked her idea of making a tree from the little characters (a bit like the kitty tree which will be back in stock in a couple of weeks hopefully) but I thought it would be fun to use the elves and make them all green to look more tree like!

I stamped all the elves in one go straight from the sheet just using a bit of tape to temporarily fix it in my stamping platform before colouring them all with pencils and die cutting them with the matching dies.

I kept the colours minimal - just 3 shades of green for their dungarees, hats and boots and one red for the shirts and accessories with tiny highlights of yellow and blue, the uniformity of colours gives the idea of a tree and decorations.

To make it into a card I did a soft blue sky blended with ink leaving a white snowy hill to stand them on and then just lined them up adding the ball on top from the same set as the tree topper with some rays of light which were taken from Concord and 9th Merry and Bright stamp set which is where I took the sentiments from too.

There are so many little agenda stamps that would work for this idea - I might be making lots of weird trees for Christmas this year!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

Last week was crazy busy both in the store and because I had lots of medical appointments and a whole afternoon with the accountants as its time to pay lots of taxes so I didn't manage to get any of the stock loaded to store that I had planned to last week.

So I am working a little today to play catch up and Flora and Fauna will be live today.

We got the new washi tapes from AlteNew late on Friday so will get those processed today and they will hopefully be live today or tomorrow.

We also got the latest release from Lil' Inker Designs - I will work on that tomorrow.

We also have some new Christmas themed papers and accessories from Echo Park / Carta Bella which I will get sorted as soon as I can.

The new release from Waffle Flower crafts is in transit and will be in store this week.

We will be hopefully be ordering restocks from Avery Elle, Lawn Fawn and Mama Elephant this week if they have their Christmas products available yet as many have sold out at their end too.   It's also the start of the month so we'll start to get emails to order all the new monthly releases from MFT, Neat and Tangled, Mama Elephant and Concord and 9th.

We've also kicked off a new colour challenge for October based on Halloween colours in our customer only facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/shcvips/   You have to provide an order number to gain access to this group so find one before you click the link as you have to answer the questions to get in.

Right, time for breakfast and then a little weekend overtime........

Catch you later

Tara

Hidden Elves

I've got a fun card to share today with a mini tutorial with a whole lot of "not to do's" as I made a lot of mistakes figuring out how to do what I wanted to do, but now I can tell you what not to do as well as how to do it all better!

What I wanted to do was use the new double slider loop slots die from MFT to make multiple characters appear with one pull tab.

So I created a scene using Rosie and Bernie in the North Pole as my focal point, and then when you pull the one central tab, 3 hidden elves appear!   The elves are from the new Mama Elephant Little Elf Agenda set.

So the how to, and more importantly, how not to goes like this:

Create the background - I used two shades of blue oxides to blend a soft sky and then used a glue pen and white embossing powder to add snow.  (I had a light pencil line so I knew where my hill would roughly go.

Using the pencil line as a guide to ensure the slots will be hidden, die cut your 3 slots where you want your characters to appear, and a small circle die to cut a hole for your pull tab.

Thread some strong plastic strips through the 3 holes.   So - far - all is good :-)

Now here is where I made my first mistake - I needed a piece of card across the 3 strips of plastic so when you pull the tab all 3 move at once.  That's correct - but what I did wrong was put that on the front with the 3 characters stuck onto......

So when you pull the tab - the characters go DOWN not UP!   WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

So I took it apart and got it correct - the acetate tabs the characters were attached to where attached with red liner tape to the plastic on the FRONT of the panel.   Here's the shot of the fix (the card tore where I peeled the previous layers apart - that was mistake number 2 - NEVER put an interactive card together before you check the mechanism!)   But it will be hidden anyhow so no big deal.

The card strip then gets connected to the plastic strips on the BACK of the panel.  I did this and check it and it still didn't work :(    What happened is that the two little girls popped up but the boy on the left didn't.   Basic physics right - the forces on the pull tab nearest to the pull tab are greater than the forces further out, so the card strip was pulled in a diagonal.

I did a REALLY clumsy fix as I had to work with what I had to get this finished to share with you.  So here's the big fat mess on the back.

I basically stuck a strip of really thick (400gsm) card stock to strengthen the strip to try and even out the pressure and stop it buckling to a diagonal.  Still didn't work, so I added a diagonal strip to exert more force on the boy elf - hey presto - that worked, but the blue card (my only super thick colour!) showed, hence the notch I had to cut out of the diagonal to stop it showing on the front!   If I do this again, I would use thick board (like the back of the do bend envelopes I send dies out in) or a wooden lolly stick and I would fold the pull tab around it so it was double thickness for pushing back up.p

So now you know what not to do on the mechanism, you should be able to apply the idea - having your pull tab centrally between any popping up characters should also make the "physics" work better.  (so for example if I'd put another elf further on the right, that would have helped spread the pull forces equally.

For the main element of the card I also did something a little different - I layered decoupage style image stamped and coloured on white glitter card (I used the Concord and 9th neutrals pack, but pixie dust from Lawn Fawn would work too)

You can see here the detailed layered and depth.  I started with an image stamped on plain white card and coloured Bernie on that layer, then added the igloo which was shaded with grey alcohol markers, then I added the mailbox again on white card and added the snow, flag and pole back on top with coloured glitter card.  The snow was added as another layer on top of the igloo for more depth and then finally Rosie coloured on plain card with glitter snowballs on top.

The sentiment is from the new Santa's Sleigh set from Mama Elephant.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• The latest release from Mama Elephant is live in store and selling fast.

• We have a huge delivery of Lawn Fawn restocks which we are working on sorting and will be in store either today or tomorrow.

• Concord and 9th's new release got held up in customs and is expected early this week.

• Neat and Tangled also got stuck in customs - again due early this week.

• AlteNew's latest release shipped on Friday so is due this week (customs willing!)

• Flora and Fauna's new release also shipped on Friday so is due later this week.

That's all for today - catch you later.

Tara