Gardener's Spring Flowers Waterfall Card

Maternity leave so far seems to have been all work and no play - and a lot of naps as I’m so tired all the time. I thought I’d have plenty of time to do things like sort out photo albums, file about two year’s worth of important documents sitting in a drawer, and maybe read a book while enjoying a cup of tea. Instead I’m working my way through a massive list of things we need to do to prepare before the baby is born - everything from setting up the baby monitor to checking we’ve got enough sheets for the Moses basket to writing my birth plan, which I’d intended to have finished about a month ago and still haven’t done!

But at the same time all work and no play isn’t much fun, so one evening when my husband was doing something on the computer I decided to go up to my craft room - which is now the spare room as we’ve had to move the bed out of what is now the nursery - and do a bit of card making.

I was careful to only take out a couple of boxes from my craft cupboard and ones that were right at the front - getting everything back in when you’ve taken it all out is a bit tricky and I knew I wouldn’t have the time or energy to do that at eight months pregnant.

I found something I’d bought in a bulk purchase from a local seller who was getting rid of some of her stash - a waterfall card kit from Quick Cards that promised everything I needed in one small kit to make an unusual kind of card I hadn’t tried before.

 

Unfortunately it proved a lot trickier than it looked! There were no instructions in the pack at all so I’d hoped it would be fairly self explanatory but it wasn’t. I ended up going on you tube and watching this video from Dreaming about Rubber Stamps to understand what I needed to do.
 
Even then I found I needed extra things that weren’t in the pack like a couple of brads, and I had started to use a long strip saying ‘happy birthday’ until I realised it would go behind the ‘waterfall’ and you wouldn’t be able to read the words, so I switched it for a patterned piece of card.

The way a waterfall card works is this: you have three or four overlapping images in a line down the card, and a tab at the bottom. When you pull the tab the picture squares turn over to show the other side in a sort of waterfall effect, and when you push the tab back up, the pictures all turn back the right way up.

What I didn’t like with this kit was that the yellow flower images provided had nothing on the back so when they had flipped you were left with plain white squares. They also didn’t take up much of the card blank provided with a lot of white space around them, so I decided to customise the card.

 

I used the three spring flower images you can see below, and stuck them onto the piece of card on the right - aside from the 'happy birthday' / 'happy mothers' day' strips down the side which are separate, there was a long section of card already scored in the right places for the waterfall card folds.

 

 

But I found it far too plain as I said, so I used a piece of backing paper from the Born to Shop- Go Green range and mounted the waterfall cards on that, along with a 'happy birthday' sentiment from the Quick Cards pack. I used a 'with love' tag as the piece you pull, though the strip that holds the waterfall cards on was made from a scrap piece of card covered with another piece of the Born to Shop paper and secured by two brads as glue wasn't strong enough.

 



 

I also didn't like the fact that when the flower cards turned over there was nothing underneath; I think this sort of card would work much better with a 'reveal' of similar images or even a surprise greeting on the other side. For this one I used more of the same backing paper and a picture from the same Born to Shop Go Green set but next time I might plan something that's a bit more of a surprise!

 

Here's a video of the card showing what happens when you pull the tab! Please excuse the wobbliness, I was trying to hold the card and pull the tab and film at the same time!

 

 I'm sharing this with Crafting with Dragonflies where the theme this week is special folds.

Card making kits

You can buy kits with everything you need for making just one or four cards - they contain a blank card and envelope (or four) and a selection of embellishments on a similar theme, eg baby, female birthday etc. They can be a good value way of adding to your kit and also make it easier to find inspiration - it can be a lot quicker if you have to come up with a design using just a few different embellishments than rummaging around in your entire collection if you have a massive cardmaking kit like I do!

Normally the card kits are only 99p or £1, so they are indeed good value. The best ones are Anita's where you only get enough to make one card, but I have often seen unbranded packs to make four cards in Poundland. The quality of the card blanks themselves is not as good - they are thinner and less sturdy - and the embellishments also tend to be poorer quality, e.g. the end of a piece of ribbon might be a little frayed. But otherwise they are good, and as they are so cheap I don't feel guilty about occasionally treating myself to a pack! The two cards below are made from a pack that I think I received as a gift, where the embellishments were all on a gold theme.

In both cases I tried to think about proportion and symmetry and am quite pleased with the designs I came up with using just a few squares of coloured paper and some sequins and the butterfly embellisments in the pack. I also like the fact that the card blanks are square - usually I use rectangular and I find that working with a square gives me different design ideas.

There will be some cake-related posts on here soon, I promise! I am going through my old photos in chronological order and I only got into cake decorating and serious baking more recently.