Happy Birthday Pop Up Card

my work surface during the 'play' stage

Last week, I decided to make a birthday card for a friend who shares the same birthday as mine.   I knew I had to use the pop-up mechanism I learned at Cricut Mountain Make-a-thon for the interior.

pop-up mechanism installed - ready for the pop-out card

When I got to this stage, I realized I wasn't quite sure how to measure where to attach the pop-out accordion at left to the mechanism at right to make it all work.  I knew I had to glue top-right and bottom-left, but how far out from the center did I need to go?  Since we didn't receive written instructions from the class, I popped over to search Youtube, where I found a great, 7-minute video of the whole process (placing the pop-out accordion shows up at 5:40).  Thank you Srushti Patil!

I embossed the background squares before adding the lettering

I kept "Enjoy the Little Things", because it makes me smile.  And I liked how the embossed backgrounds echoed that theme.

But what to do with the front?  I decided to recreate one of Cricut Design Space's projects, Tiny Birthday Banners, with a couple of modifications.  I used a different font for the letterin, and changed the pennants a little.  Hot glue guns and I don't generally get along, so I added a little fold-over flap to the top of each banner, which made it super easy to attach them to the banner string. 

Ready to attach the banners to the card, I discovered I didn't plan the stages of work well at all.  I had to carefully unstick the edges of the inner liner paper (the sky blue) so that I could tape and glue down the ends of the two strings underneath.  Oops!

Despite that, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.  Too bad I forgot to take a 'clean' picture of it!  Instead, you get this close-up with the scissors.  That's definitely the way things seem to roll for me these days.

Finished card, ready to mail. 

Want the links to these projects?  I've shared the links on my Cricut Profile page.  You'll find this card, and a full Happy Birthday banner I had to make afterwards.   Cricut's new interface doesn't currently allow me to link the projects directly from my blog - my only options for sharing are Pinterest and Facebook - they don't give me a link option.  If I have time, I may give them a call later today and ask for help.  In the meantime, my profile is a work around. 

I also plan to post a project that's simply as many miniature pennants as can fit arranged on an 8.5 x 11" page.   This one's for people like me who a) Hate to waste paper and b) May like having extra pennants hanging around, ready for that unexpected party.  Unfortunately, Cricut requires me to add a photo of my own of the project before I can post that to my profile.  Right now all of the pennants are tucked away in the closet of the guest bedroom where my niece is fast asleep, so any new photos will have to wait.  :) 

But hey, two blog posts in a single month!  I may be on a roll. 

Cheers!