Mom's Christmas Card, 2016

The time has come for me to share my mom's Christmas card. As you may remember, my card for mom is the first card I tackle when I start to make my Christmas cards. It is always the most challenging one to make, and the most unique.

This year I decided to jump on the chibi light band wagon and make a card with lights. I wanted to make the card a pop up, with back lighting for each of the main elements on the inside of the cards.

I die cut several of the buildings and multiple trees from the FranticStamper "village" dies, using 110lb white cardstock.

Village Church FRA-Die-09540	Village School House FRA-Die-09542	Village Candy Shoppe FRA-Die-09543	Village Grocery Shoppe FRA-Die-09544
Village Book Shoppe FRA-Die-09545	Village Victorian FRA-Die-09546	Village Cottage FRA-Die-09547	Village Shrubs and Trees FRA-Die-09546

I also die cut a few tree and hill edgers for the background.

Hill With Pine Trees Edger   FRA-Die-09178	Evergreen Forest Edger   FRA-Die-09446
Stitched Scene Builder Edgers   FRA-Die-09403

And then, I die cut Santa's Sleigh and his reindeer out of black cardstock, and punched a 1.25" circle out of pale yellow card stock.

Santa's Sleigh   FRA-Die-09622

It is far too complicated to fill in all of the details of how I made the pop ups, and how I wired the chibi lights but I will give you a bit of a description of the steps I took.

The four pop-up bases are each 1/2"x7" box mechanisms. I started with a 7"x2" strip of cardstock and scored it lengthwise at every .5". I used strong tape on the first and last of the four areas of the mechanism created by the scores. I aligned the two edges of the box piece with the fold of the card and closed the card to affix them in place. When the card was reopened, there was a 1/2" tall and 1/2" deep box across the base of the inside of the card. I glued the very bottom of the church to the center of the front of the box, very close to the top of the box. I then repeated the process with more 7"x 2" panels, creating boxes that become attached to the base of the card and to the box behind it, and adding buildings and evergreen trees to the boxes. I used a total of four box mechanisms. On the last box I attached a few trees and a hill cut with the stitched hill Edgers.

The wiring followed the Chibi directions for multiple lights on a circuit, with the positive and negative copper tape winding in parallel lines from the top right of the card inside down the inside of the card front, then meandering through the village. I covered the wiring with strips of 1/2" 80lb card stock with 1/8" holes punched at each light.

I created the snowy base with texture paste smeared onto the scene with a finger, and then sprinkled liberally with diamond dust.

The battery is housed in a pocket made from a rectangle of card stock folded over the battery. The copper tape connects to both inside sides of the folded rectangle. The battery itself sits on the negative lead but is surrounded by 3 layers of foam tape, ensuring that the connection to the positive side of the battery can only be made only by pushing the top of the folded rectangle.

The blue layer was made by by sponging blue inks onto white cardstock. It is attached with 3 layers of foam tape at the top, to align the top with the level of the tape around the battery housing. The panel was attached with glue tape at the bottom. The tree lines and snowy hills were attached with foam tape, building up to 3 layers of foam tape thickness, making the top and bottom of the card flush with each other. The moon was place over the battery to mark its position as well as to add another feature to the image. The stars were cut from white cardstock (covered with Tulip glow-in-the-dark paint) using the starfall  and the Northern Star dies and then were affixed randomly.

Northern Star FRA-Die-09246

Starfall Background FRA-Die-09614

The last element I added to the inside of the box was the Script Merry Christmas, die cut from deep red cardstock.

Script Merry Christmas   FRA-Die-09249

The front of the card was made by layering a piece of glow in the dark painted card stock onto a dark blue piece of cardstock, and then layering on top of that a piece of cardstock, sponged dark blue and die cut with the same star dies on top of that. Finally, the Peace on Earth was diecut from white cardstock and added to the card front.

Large Peace on Earth   FRA-Die-09248

Mom enjoyed the card. I hope you did as well!