Incorporating physical action into a greeting card is an unexpected feature that will catch the eye of young and old alike. Two cards here provide both movement and humor.
You Crack Me Up!
(Stamp credits: Chicken, egg—Technique Tuesday “Cheeky Chickens” die set.)
Trishta Blizzard of Kodiak, Alaska, is the artist of the clever moveable slider card that revisits the question of what came first: the chicken or the egg? If the artist’s last name strikes you as uniquely interesting and fun because of where she lives you wouldn’t be the first to contemplate the word play.
Trishta gets asked about her name a lot considering she lives in the very cold climate in the northern-most state of the union. “I can’t take complete credit for it; my amazing husband stole my heart 15 years ago and I took his last name in return.”
When creating the card featured here, Trishta was inspired by a previous RSM call for art that made her think of the coming spring and birds (it may have been the Birds, Bees and Bugs issue), which is surely a welcome sight after a long, dark Alaskan winter.
A second mental image that arose in Trishta’s mind was a particular Looney Tunes cartoon that features a big white rooster named Foghorn Leghorn and his much younger and smaller chick sidekick.
“In the cartoon the little chicken is an egg and at one point two little legs pop-out of it and Foghorn takes care to protect the little egg from disasters as it runs around,” says Trishta. “That scene in the cartoon made me think of the expression, ‘You crack me up,’ as in, ‘Something’s funny, ha ha!’ Because it does crack me up!”
Moving cards come in a variety of styles and Trishta’s card shown here is created in the fashion of slider cards and was the first of its type Trishta has ever made. “It was super fun and was made even easier by using Technique Tuesdays moving card die cuts.”
The architecture of a slider card entails creating a channel-straight or curved-in the front of a card using a metal die designed for that purpose or cutting the channel freehand using an artist’s knife. Trishta used a die to cut out a slightly curving channel in the face of her card.
The channel, which is closed on each end, acts as a guided pathway for one or more images that are individually attached to a free-sliding mechanism situated behind the card face. The mechanism has two purposes: it holds the image in place and also allows the image to slide freely along the channel with the touch of a finger.
Both the rooster and the egg with legs were stamped, cut out and attached separately to slider mechanisms. The front panel was then layered over complementary cardstock layers and adhered over a card base.
An article featuring various slider cards similar to the one shown here, including detailed instructions on how to make them, was featured in RSM’s Fall 2018 issue.
So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to get moving and try your hand at one or all three of these delightful styles of movable greeting cards.
Howdy-ho from Mt. Moosemore!
(Stamp credits: Mt. Moosemore, hot air balloon—Riley & Co.; clouds—Katzelkraft.)
Sherry Morley greets us from Henderson, Nevada, with a unique slider card complete with message.
She says she doesn’t “really know who was the originator of putting a hidden message in the sliding track on a slider card, but it was a great idea!” When she doesn’t have a rubber stamp that says exactly what she wants to say, she tells us, “I use a clear Avery address label and pick a font and size for the project I’m working on and trim it to fit.”
“When RSM asked for America the Beautiful artwork,” Sherry says,
“I thought of my Moosemore rubber stamp. I mean if you’re going to add another head to Mt. Rushmore, why not a moose—they are so beautiful!”
Regarding her coloring, Sherry says, “Mount Moosemore was stamped with Hickory Smoke Distress ink and colored with Copics.”
Sherry also reports that when she revisited the story in the Fall 2018 issue of RSM about making slider cards, she gave up cutting slider tracks with an X-Acto knife and ruler.
“Thank goodness for all the stamp companies out there who make slider dies! It’s so much easier and less time-consuming to make slider cards now.” Has our stamper artist ever visited Mt. Rushmore? “It’s on my bucket list.”