Ink Blended Pop Up Box Card by Laura

Welcome, crafty friends! It’s Laura back with you today I’ll be showing you how to incorporate ink blending on an interactive pop-up box card. You might have seen from the previous few days that all this month, the design team are going to be sharing a variety of interactive card projects. Interactive cards tend to be a labour of love and generally take longer to make, but the results are so unique. Its a true handmade gift (from the heart) you just can’t buy on the high street.

Pop Up Card

The card I’m sharing with you today has lots of instructions, but I promise it isn’t necessarily as hardas much as it will just take more time to pull all the parts together. A pop-up box card is super cool in that it folds flat (for mailing in a standard A2 sized envelope!) but opens up into a 3D box with that you can embellish with my type of stamp you want!

Background

First thing I did was to cut a piece of Neenah Solar White to measure 9 ¼” x 7 ½”. Then I used Nuvo Dual Blending Brushes to add Distress Inks in shades (see image #1 for exact colors used) to look like a dusky night scene. Make sure you do BOTH sides of the cardstock as it will be seen from every angle once the box is constructed.

As you can see from the picture below, I left (approximately) 2” white along the bottom of the long side of the panel. We will be using this later so make sure to use a scrap piece of paper under your fingers while you ink blend and you’ll keep your fingers (and the card) clean from ink!

Adding Interest

If you plan to use a Distress Sprayer, now would be the time to use it. I didn’t decide to use it until my box was fully assembled, and you might see on some of the final images, a bit of the color from the flaps transferred onto lighter parts of the box before the water spots were completely dry. I don’t think you can notice too bad in the final product so I didn’t try to “fix” it.

Next I went over to my Fiskar’s Trimmer and made the following score lines:

With the cardstock in landscape style (lying on the long side with the white side at the bottom), score at:

2 ⅛”
4 ¼”
6 ⅜”
8 ½”

With the cardstock in portrait style (the white side will be on the left):

Score at 2 ½” from the right side EXCEPT in the fourth quadrant (Image #2, #3 & #4)
Cut off 2” from the left side (most of this should still be white)

Assembling The Pop Up Card

Once you have that done, cut along the score lines starting from the darked edge and stopping at the intersecting score line. On the last score line on the right, you will just want to cut off that smaller, top-right rectangle. Also cut a small angle cut at the top of the remaining small rectangle.

Use your bone folder along every score line and fold your card into shape. Adhere it together by using scor tape on that little flap you cut earlier. Put the tape on the outsideof the flap and adhere to the inside of the closed box (so you can’t see it.) I used scor tape here because it is so strong and I wanted to make sure the box stays intact.

Cross Bars

With our box’s outer frame assembled, let’s move onto making the cross bars that will go across the middle so we can “hang” our stamped images from it. This is where that 2” strip (you cut off earlier) will come in. Working with the short edge that has a score mark close to one side, you want to cut this off at 3 ⅝”.

Now cut this in half to create two, 1” strips. Since these will be adhered to the top on the inside of the box (and will very much be seen), I wanted to add a bit of ink to match that of the box so they blended into the structure of the box. (Image #5 & #6)

Adhere The Cross Bars

With that done, fold the side flaps and adhere to first strip to the back of the card, with the flaps butting up against the back of the box. Do the same with the second strip, but have the flaps up against the front of the box.

Tape to inside with edges meeting in corners on outer edges. I noticed at this point that my lovely ink blending toward the bottom of the box was getting covered by the folded flaps, so I chopped off roughly 2” of each flap. Also I used a corner rounder to soften the edges of all the flaps and the top of the back panel. Intensifying the colour a bit by doing a quick touch up on darkest ink-blended colors. Then I considered using a cloud border die along the flap edges but I wasn’t completely happy with how that looked so I’ll save that idea for another design.

Hang in there! We are SO close to being done!! ?

Stamping

Now we are ready to move on to stamping. If you are planning to stamp anything on any of the folded-down flaps, this is the time to do it.I wanted the rest of my sentiment to be continued on the front, bottom flap, so I stuck the flattened box in my stamping tool so I could hold it down with the magnets.I used my powder tool to prep the flap before stamping with Versamark and heat embossing with Ranger Gold Embossing Powder. For the actual stamping, since it was just a small sentiment, I used an acrylic block instead of lining up the stamp in my stamping tool. I do this a lot, and really find that the stamping tool is a fabulous investment, and can be helpful for a variety of stamping techniques.

Stamping The Main Image

Next we’ll stamp the images you want to use for the insidepart that will “pop-out” of the box. You can also stamp additional embellishments for the flaps (as I did for the back and front panels – just make sure to only overlap the outer edge on oneof the sides or it will be seen when the box is flat). Stamp the images you want to use. You can use pretty much any stamp to suit any occasion – have fun with this! You can also consider embellishing your side flaps, or even the underside.

Using The Heaven Sent Stamp

For this card, I used the super cute Honey Bee Heaven Sent Stamp. The main star of this adorable stamp set is a sweet baby bunny and some really special sentiments. My daughter just turned three this past weekend, and EVERY night (for well over six months now) two of the books she picks for her bedtime stories are ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ and ‘Guess How Much I Love You’…both of which feature amongst the lovely sentiments included in the set! So, I decided to use the cloud and star accessory stamps and I’ll use baby bunny on another card. ?

I prepped a bit of vellum with my powder tool, stamped the cloud and star several times, and heat embossed with a twinkly, gold embossing powder. I fussy cut those cute stars and the dainty clouds with my scissors.

Cloud Sentiment Area

For the solid clouds, I used the rest of that discarded strip of cardstock we cut off the bottom of the original panel. With the bit of Antique Linen along the bottom, I die cut a few clouds from Lawn Fawn Simply Puffy Clouds Die. I just wanted to add a bit of variety and they seemed to add bit of weight to this gravity-defying, celestial design. Using two of the clouds, stamped the first half of the sentiment across them, and glued them to the top part of the back panel.

I cut thin strips of acetate (any sturdy plastic backing will do) and used a bit of tape runner on the ends to adhere to the front (or back) of the stars and clouds. Then I played around with several variations of how I wanted my scene to look. To do this, I used small strips of Post-It Tape on the bottom of the acetate strips so I could see how it looked before committing to anything.

Once I was happy with the placement, I used glue to adhere the images to the crossbars. Remember you can use the front and back of the crossbars to create even more depth. I also added a cloud and some stars to the front and back panels to finish off the design.

Finished Card

Well, folks, I believe you now have yourself a really special card that is a gift unto itself! I hope you were able to follow along, it was quite a task to write this in such a way it made sense. Hopefully, in conjunction with the photos, you get the gist. If not, drop me a comment below and I’ll be happy to clarify. ?

Keep your eyes peeled for more fun, interactive creations from our fabulous design team this month and don’t forget to share yourmakes over in the The Little Paper Treehouse TribeFacebook group. With all the hard work that goes into making these one-of-a-kind creations, you should share them proudly with a friendly bunch of fellow cardmakers.

Well, that’s all for now and…

See Y’all soon! xo