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MAKE ALTERNATIVE GREETINGS CARD USING YOUR CRICUT
Are you looking for a totally unique, totally awesome greetings card to gift your friend this birthday!? Here I am going to walk you through step by step how to make this alternative greeting’s card using your Cricut. This project was so much fun and didn’t take long at all! This is an absolute must not just for birthdays but also any other occasion you want to let someone know they are totally awesome!. Wedding…Birthday… Graduation…. make it memorable with this fun concertina project, which not only acts as a gift card but also a decoration too! Put this up on your mantle piece, or on a shelf or a desk so your loved one can feel totally awesome for the rest of the day!
All it takes is some card, some glue and your cutting machine! I love this paper greetings card tutorial… and best of all you can download this SVG for FREE at my FREE SVG LIBRARY! So let’s get started! Follow along while I walk you through how to upload your SVG to Cricut design space and how to use the Cricut design space software to craft your concertina card correctly before putting our concertina card together.
This design comes with a personal and commercial license to use up to 250 made items, but please do not re-sell or re-distribute the files. To download the free ‘party prop’ SVG bundle click here!
Materials
- You are totally Awesome Birthday Card SVG
- Solid core card in a variety of colors, mirror cardstock and glitter cardstock.
- (optional) foam sticky pads or sticky glue dots
- glue
Tools
- Cutting machine (Cricut maker, Silhouette, Explore or Joy)
- A Cricut light gip mat (blue) or standard grip green mat
- A fine-point blade
- Scoring wheel or stylus
- Cricut pen
Instructions
- Upload the You Are Totally Awesome Birthday Card SVG into Cricut Design Space. The design is split up into three sections and all three will open out on your canvas together as one group.
2. Check the size of the SVG and resize to suit your project and/or the size of the envelope you wish the card to fit. I want my card to fit a W 6.5″ x H 9″ envelope so I have designed this project to suit. If you need to resize your project to suit a different sized envelope its easy to do so, just make sure your envelope is at least an inch bigger in height and width than your card. Once folded up the card is quite bulky.
To resize your project…. Ungroup the project so each three sections are no longer grouped together, select one section e.g “You are” and change the Width and Height dimensions you want (in this case I resized it to 10.258 W and 7.5 H.) then resize the second section “totally” by eye so that it’s left side edge lines up with the right side edge of the “you are” section. See picture below. And repeat with the final third section ” Awesome.” Once finished you need to check they all line up.
3. Within each section you will have a group for the back concertina card section (in grey) all grouped together and another group for the text, balloon and stars elements all grouped together.
Before we move on we need to change the elements of the back concertina card section from basic cut to score and pen. so we can create the concertina folds and the draw lines of the balloon strings. To do this select the section you are working with e.g ‘Totally’ then select ungroup so we work with just the back section. Then select each of the lines and change to score or pen line as below.
4. Once finished all three sections should look like this. See below. Select each section individually, so you are selecting the card back (basic cut), the score lines and the pen lines all together and then select Attach, so they are all attached together. This means when you come to cut/score/use the pen tool, they are all actioned in the right place. NOTE: Do not attach with the balloon, star, text elements. Keep these separate to the 3 concertina back sections.
5.Make sure all the other elements e.g the balloons, stars are not grouped together, then select MAKE. Once selected your mats should look like this:
Note. If you want to arrange these elements differently to a method that works for you then by all means do.
5. For this project I used a heavyweight cardstock 290 gsm / 110lbs. I selected glitter cardstock for my setting (browse materials) as this is great at cutting heavyweight cardstock and I’ve never had any problems. I also used a 0.4 tip Cricut pen in black. Cricut design space will inform you when to insert your Cricut pen and scoring wheel /stylus and when to switch to the fine point blade.
I start by crafting the three back sections of the concertina first…making sure they are cut ok and that the pen lines and score lines are all ok. Before cutting the other elements I glue the three card backs together so that they can dry while I cut the other pieces out.
I used tack over it glue here. But any craft glue will work. Glue the left side edge of section 2 to the back of the right side edge of section 1. Glue the left side edge of section 3 to the back right side edge of section 2. See below. Refer to this pic to make sure you are glueing the right sections.
6. Once dry and all the balloon, star and text elements are cut I lay them out and refer to this design for reference….
I wanted this card to look quite dynamic, as if all the text and the balloons and stars are having a party across the concertina. To make the text stand out you can use double sided craft foam or sticky glue dots to make them sit up and push out which I think looks quite good.
I waited to fold at the scores lines at the end. This made it easier to stick the text, balloon and star elements. I just had to wait for them to dry before folding. If you have a ruler or a scrapper to help fold that will make it easier.
I love how this turned out. Its so nice to create something different and unique that will for sure make the person you gift it too feel really special.
How cool does this look displayed on a mantle piece? For my fiance’s birthday I left it out the night before in the kitchen with some chocolates so it was nice surprise when he got up before going to work.
Who’s the lucky person you are going to craft this for?
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