Welcome! Today's My Favorite Things Stamps Twice the Wishes Kit post is supposed to be an "Out of the Box" use--one in which we are given free reign to combine other MFT products with the Twice the Wishes kit components. I have to warn you before you try to figure out where the Twice the Wishes Kit comes in on today's card that I took the "Out of the Box" concept very seriously. . . In fact, I followed a rabbit trail of creative thoughts so far out of the box that I might have gone out of the warehouse instead! I hope that's okay with you. My Tuesday evening post will be much closer to "in the box," and you'll have no problem seeing the kit in that one!
So, before I show you my stepped out shots, I thought I'd show you the closed tab (top picture in this post) and pulled tab (picture directly above). The pull tab and its groove are the main components from the Twice the Wishes Kit. Other than that, well, "out of the box." After I figured out how to construct a pull tab on yesterday's "in the box" Twice the Wishes card, I just kept thinking of other MFT stamp sets that would be fun to do the same thing to. I finally settled upon the Sweet Safari stamp set to play with because of its "sticking your neck out for me" sentiment. I took some creative license in putting a giraffe and a zebra in what looks more like a jungle than a clump of yummy trees, but they DO eat leaves. . .
The rest of my post is for the few of you who actually want to see how this card came together. Business first: as a reminder, the Twice the Wishes Card Kit will be available on Tuesday evening at 10pm, Eastern time at MFT Stamps. At that time, the kit link at the bottom of my post will magically work. And remember to stop by the MFT Blog and leave a comment on the Twice the Wishes Kit post for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate, okay?
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I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have the giraffe's neck extend, and that I would need to hide his head mostly behind something like a clump of leaves. I also knew that I have a fabulous set of tree dies, but the leaves were small and sparse on them--maybe too sparse to hide my giraffe's head behind. So, back to square one: trees. . . How about the line stamp from Distressed Patterns? It worked! I used a scrap of paper to mask of part of the width of the line stamp so that my trees could be various sizes, and then I colored the tree trunks with Copic markers.
Next I needed leaves and undergrowth, and again, Distressed Patterns was perfect with Kraft ink , Sour Apple, and Jellybean Green.
I used a Copic Blue-Green to add sky in the background between trees. I did not mask; I knew that the sky was light enough that a little pale blue green on the trunks and greenery wouldn't really hurt anything. I used a Yellow=Green to make the foreground greenery a little more solid looking.
Ready to figure out the pull tab mechanism now. I had stamped two giraffes so that I'd have an extra one to raise above the leaves. (I colored that one carefully only from the neck up since that was all that I needed.) Here I have put both giraffes in place to see how far up my pull-tab giraffe head and neck will need to extend.
After deciding how far up I wanted my giraffe neck to extend, I used my Twice the Wishes slot die (shown above) to cut the slot. This part isn't shown above, but I trimmed the giraffe that was going to be attached to the pull tab at the base of his neck and then glued him to the oval white disk in the pull channel.
Next I turned the card front over and glued my pull tab to the back of the white disk. You can see that I have already added foam tape on either side of my pull tab and to the rest of the back. Not shown above: After peeling the backing off of the foam tape, I attached a plain backing piece of cardstock to hold the channel in place.
Flipping my card back over, this is what you would see. The sliding piece is the giraffe neck. To the left is the back side of the whole giraffe that will show, all except for his head, which is "hidden behind" that large leaf. I added enough foam tape in areas outside the sliding channel area for the moving giraffe head to be able to go up and down behind the whole giraffe.
Whew--the tricky parts are finished! The top of the head that you see behind that large leaf is the top of the pull-tab giraffe's head.
And here it is with the tab and head extended. Yes, it works! From here on out, it was simply a matter of arranging die cut leaves from Die-namics Wild Greenery to fill in the empty spaces but still allow the second giraffe head to slide freely up and down.
In addition to the greenery on the trees, I also added some greenery as ground so that I wouldn't have levitating animals. ;-) Some of the pieces stick out far enough that I would need to use a padded mailer to mail it; it definitely won't fit through the 1/4" Post Office template.
And, yes, I'm thinking that this one might have strayed a bit too far "out of the box," but it was fun! Just think of all of the stamp sets that you could add a sliding pull tab action to! I have another set in mind already, but I need to order its companion dies to save myself some fussy cutting time.
Again, the Twice the Wishes Card Kit will be available on Tuesday evening at 10pm, Eastern time at MFT Stamps. At that time, the kit link below will *magically* work. Don't forget to stop by the MFT Blog and leave a comment on the Twice the Wishes Kit post for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate, okay? You will also find a list there of the DT ladies who have created their own "out of the box" projects for Twice the Wishes--enjoy!
If you made it this far, you deserve a medal. Thanks for reading my long, rambling post!
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