Our daughter is turning 5 this year! FIVE whole years!! I can hardly believe it. She is our little preemie, arriving 8 weeks early and weighing only 3 lbs 6 oz. After a month in the NICU, we were finally able to bring her home – well, to a hotel we were living in since our house sold during my 12-day hospital stay before she was born. (Yeah…that’s a whole other post on it’s own.) Anyway, she is healthy, happy, sweet, full of energy, and such a wonderfully kind little person!
When I saw this Scallop Box Card Pop-up die from Lawn Fawn’s recent release, I knew I had to make her invitations with it! Kelly Marie from Lawn Fawn posted a great video on how to assemble the box card, as well as a couple of examples including one with mermaids. Our daughter had requested a mermaid theme for her party this year, so it was meant to be!
I started by stamping lots of different images from Lawn Fawn’s Mermaid For You until I knew how they would look layered. I wanted a total of four mermaids, representing each of us, and our daughter riding on the narwhal. I stamped the layered images onto Neenah 80 lb using MFT Black Licorice ink. I was creating multiples of this invite, so my MISTI was essential in helping to line up everything. I used some Post-It Craft Paper (unfortunately, no longer available) from my stash to create the masks. Since I was going to be masking some of the images several times, I chose this masking paper as it is thicker than a normal Post-It note and I thought it would hold up better to multiple stampings. As I was repeatedly stamping, I switched out the mask for a new one if it looked like the ink was starting to bleed through, usually after 8 or nine stampings. All the images were stamped or colored in with my Copics and Spectrum Noir alcohol markers:
- Mermaids: BG6, BG8 / BG4, BG6 (hair) and RV09 / V15 (tops)
- Merman hair: BG4, BG6, BG8 and E35, E57, EB5
- All mermaids/mermen: CG2, DG4, BT4 (tails) and E31, E33 (skin)
- Narwhal: BG2, BG4 (body) and B05, B97 (tusk)
- Rocks: IG4, IG6
- Seahorse: IB2, BT5
- Fish: R24, YR18, YR12, Y13, G05, B02, V17
- Seaweed: Hero Arts lime green and Hero Arts ombre lime to forever green
- Coral: Hero Arts pale tomato, Hero Arts dark quartz, Hero Arts tide pool, Recollections ombre pink to orange
I chose Core’dinations citrus teal cardstock from my stash for the box and divider pieces. The sheets I have are 12 x 12, so I cut each sheet into two 4.5 x 12 strips, and one 3 x 12 strip. For each 4.5 x 12 strip, I was able to fit the big box die twice, and the remaining 3 x 12 strip fit the divider die five times. I wanted to use 3 dividers on each card, so I did need to cut down an extra strip for those additional pieces. I used my Big Shot for all the die cutting, and added my new (yay!) custom stamp to the inside bottom of the back piece.
I also wanted to decorate the bottom edges of 3 of the sides and flaps, so I found some tan colored textured Core’dinations cardstock in my stash. I thought the texture made it look more like sand. I cut these 12 x 12 sheets into 1.5 strips and ran them through my Big Shot using just the edges of the box die. I did this twice on each side, for each card. Then I took one of the Lawn Fawn Stitched Hillside Borders dies and carefully lined these up (on a piece of graph paper) with each of the die-cut strips and scalloped pieces so they would have nice transitions between the sides. Using marked lines on the graph paper allowed me to make sure each end was about the same height.
I took some Plum A2 flat cards from Paper Source and cut out the two rectangles with the dies from this set. Note that the written measurements are not the actual size of the rectangles – I measured the approximate space within the stitched lines for each so I would know how big of a space I had to create the text while still leaving a small space between the text and the stitched lines.
I then printed the text out onto the flat cards and was able to use the dies to cut out the rectangles with the text centered perfectly.
I adhered all the box and divider pieces together using 1/4″ scor-tape, and the sand Borders with my Tombow mono dot adhesive runner. For the rectangles on the back I used my Scotch ATG. Once my boxes were assembled, I attached the stamped images onto the dividers and box with strips of 1/8″ scor-tape. The seaweed and coral pieces were tucked behind the sand and adhered with small amounts of the Tombow mono dots adhesive.
I cut strips of sturdy clear plastic from a card box, attached scor-tape to both ends, and used this to elevate the mermaid on the narwhal so that they could extend past the box edge and look as if they were swimming away.
I made sure that when the card was collapsed flat that none of the images stuck out beyond the edges of the box sides. Here’s a picture of the card collapsed, but with two of the flaps down so you can see how all the images lay flat on top of each other.
When mailed, all the flaps will be upright to hide the surprise images inside. The finished cards from this die set are meant to fit into standard A2 envelopes. I used some Pool colored envelopes from Paper Source, and these cards fit perfectly once collapsed.
I actually made two extras just for my kids to play with, as they were sad to see them get sent away. Hopefully the recipients will find these as much fun to open as my kids do!
