Twist Panel + Flower Pot + Distress Oxide Inks = Pop-up Card!
July 07, 2017
OK, so I sometimes take a while to catch up with the latest crafting trends. I spend a lot of time in my little "die cut pop-up" bubble. However, all of my crafty friends have been raving about the Distress Oxide inks, so I figured I'd better try them for myself and see what all the fuss is about.
Wow! I'm a fan!
Now normally I avoid a lot of mixed media techniques with the pop-ups - not because I don't love paints and inks and such, but because I don't want to add a lot of time to the projects, especially if I'm teaching a card in a class or video. I've found that people tend to associate all the technique time with the pop-up and are left with the impression that pop-ups are very time-consuming, even if the pop-up assembly took a minute and the inks/paints/sprays/splatters took twenty.
As I have oft proclaimed . . . you have to choose your techniques.
But actually it didn't take long to make the backgrounds. I smeared the inks onto a craft sheet, spritzed with water, dredged some white cardstock through the ink, dried with a heat gun, and voila! I made the backgrounds for the flowers, vines and flower pots using the inks.
After creating and die cutting all the pieces for a Flower Pot Pop-up Card, I decided instead to use the pieces on a Twist Panel card.
When closed, this top-fold card measures 4.5" x 5.5" and will fit in an A7 envelope (for a 5x7 card) for mailing. It is bulky, though, so extra postage will be required. The front decoration is a simpler copy of the styling of the interior, using the leftover flowers, bee and the word "Celebrate" from Word Set 2.
As the card opens, the panels start to twist and open. I used green cardstock for the arms, figuring they would blend in behind the vines since I was making clear panels.
Once open, the line of flower pots suspend in the air. The greeting is an older Stampin' Up! stamp from my stash, used on a scrap of the terra cotta inked background.
To give the illusion of floating flower pots, I cut the panels for the Twist Panel card from scraps of clear packaging material. I knew that the plastic would not want to bend and unbend easily, so I cut between each panel to create four individual clear panels, punched holes, and tied them together with twine to act as the hinges. For the upper hinges, I tied knots in the twine and cut off the excess, but for the lower hinges, I tied bows in the twine as further decoration. This close-up will show the clear panels and the styling of the flowers, using the inked backgrounds, a clear rhinestone in the center of each flower, and then accenting with copper Nuvo drops on the big flowers, and white paint pen on the smaller ones.
Here's a quick GIF showing the card in action: (click to make it play - not sure why it won't auto-play)
The Twist Panel die set is now back in stock! You can find my die sets at your favorite local or online craft stores or on our website. Check out our Videos Page to learn how to assemble the die sets OR if you learn better with written instructions, check out our Instructions Page to download a PDF Owner's Manual.
