Sunday, March 2, 2014

My First Card in a Box!

If you're an active paper crafter or spend any time on Pinterest, no doubt you've seen the famous Card in a Box. It's a four-sided card that lays flat for mailing and becomes 3D when taken out of the envelope. 

Well, it captured my fancy, but I was feeling overwhelmed with all the different directions and tutorials out there, many of which are for Cards in Boxes that are of different proportions. Very confusing! Three-dimensional projects don't come easy to me to begin with, but add in the other factors as well as FBS (Fried Brain Syndrome) thanks to packing and getting ready to move, I knew I needed help.

Enter my friend Margie! I asked her if she had any interest in trying the project, and she said yes. Yay! Next I asked her if she would be able to talk ME through it, and she again said yes. Double Yay!

Friday night was the night. Margie and I got together using Skype (since she lives in Wisconsin and I'm in Ohio) and both made projects. We chose different designer series paper, stamps, and embellishments, so our cards look totally different. Let me start by showing you Margie's, since I think it turned out FABULOUS!



She used the stamp set Petal Parade (free during Stampin' Up!'s Sale-a-bration event which will be in swing until March 31), the Sweet Sorbet DSP (also a Sale-a-bration freebie), and some Pool Party and Crisp Cantalope twine (also free). Being the brilliant person she is, she thought to use punches rather than fussy-cutting the flowers - something that never crossed my mind. (See why I keep her around? LOL) She used Dazzles stickers to accent the flowers, and the dragonfly and butterfly are also Dazzles. I'm wild about how her Card in a Box turned out!

I'm also surprised at how well my own first attempt turned out! Take a look:



Below are some additional views. Click on any photo to make it larger.






(back)

And here's how it looks squashed down and partially in the envelope:


Like Margie, I started with a Sahara Sand card base. This is one of those very few times when I was not impressed with a Stampin' Up! product... because we both had issues with the Sahara Sand cardstock cracking on the folds. I've never had this problem with SU! cardstock before, so I hope it's just a weird coincidence that we both had difficulties last night. Luckily the cracks were hidden by the flowers and other embellishments, so it wasn't a big deal.

I stamped several flowers from the Flower Shop stamp set in Pool Party, Crisp Cantalope, Pistachio Pudding, and Summer Starfruit onto Whisper White. Next I decided I needed leaves to fill out my little flower bouquet, and pulled from my stash some die cuts a friend had cut for me from the Little Leaves sizzlit before I had a Big Shot of my own. Thanks to the poor lighting I had last night, I can't tell you which color green the leaves are, but it's not Pistachio Pudding (which would have been ideal if I had had the energy to dig my Big Shot out of a mountain of clutter!); my guess would be Sage Shadow, but I'm honestly not sure.

I started building up the bouquet with leaves and flowers. Deciding what should go where and how to adhere it without leaving stickiness on the backs of the images was the hardest part. Once that was done, the project seemed to need a little more something. A few Hershey's nuggets later, it occurred to me to punch some butterflies from coordinating card stock and add them to the bouquet. I felt the need for a sentiment or two, so used a couple of "incentive stamps" (promotional stamps that you can get only from your demonstrator) and punches to create them. I added one on the front and one on the back. The final steps were to add some Sale-a-bration twine and then some Star Dust Stickles to the flower centers. (I could have used Stampin' Up!'s Dazzling Details, but I just grabbed the closest bottle.)

I was so pleased with my project, and since I was having lunch with a dear friend on Saturday morning, I decided to brighten her day by giving her my Card in a Box. The look on her face was priceless and worth all the effort!

Already my head is spinning with dozens more ideas on both how I could make this design better and what I could do for future projects using other stamp sets, papers, and themes! I need more hours in a day to make more Cards in Boxes!! I hope to make at least a couple more before my stamping supplies get packed away for a few months.

Coming up tomorrow: Another batch of CAS (Clean and Simple) cards headed overseas

Big smiles,
Joyce Spear a.k.a. StamperJoyce
         

1 comment:

christina d said...

Both cards came out beautiful. I am going to try one eventually. I like your FBS, that must be what I have. It sure doesn't want to work right at times.