Hi there! I’m so thrilled to finally share my interactive circus card for the Innovation Master category of the 2018 Card Design Superstar challenge at My Favorite Things! I love moveable cards, especially vintage cards with super complicated mechanisms in which multiple elements move at the same time…
The idea
I’m always racking my brain to discover new mechanisms or to modify existing ones to fit my needs. Researching vintage moveable cards online, I discovered that many of their pull tabs were not straight, but had bends and curves to adapt perfectly to the funny characters. This was really eye-opening for me! You can see some of them in the impressive collection of Larry Seidman here.
Going through the latest My Favorite Things products in their online store, “The Greatest Show” circus themed stamp set caught my eye and the idea for the card started taking shape…
The circus card in action
Before I continue, here’s a short video clip of the circus card in action:
As you can see, when the pull tab is pulled, five things happen; the elephant nods, the bear waves its arms, the lion tilts its head, the large ball rotates and the smaller one is thrown up in the air. Kind of magical, isn’t it?
The circus card tutorial
If you would like to make this card or just have a look at the mechanism, check out the video tutorial below:
I hope you didn’t find it too overwhelming… as I said in the video, if you just divide the process into small steps, anyone can make it.
The circus card template
As I promised in the video, here are the two versions of the template that you can download to make your own circus card (or adapt to your own design):
More information
I love the traditional circus color combo: red, white, blue, yellow and gold. All of these colors are present either in the card or in the matching backdrop, that I painted for the occasion.
By the way, aren’t those brass animals just beautiful? I’ve had them for the longest time and I never would have guessed that I’d end up using them as photo props.
Here’s a close up of the cute circus animals that I colored with Copic markers, fussy cut and adhered to the front and back (mechanism) panel with Stick-it and foam adhesive. I also added a bit of shading to the animals and ground with colored pencils.
Finally, here’s a list of the MFT products that I used:
- Star Celebration stencil
- The Greatest Show stamp set
- Die-namics Interactive Oval Word Windows die set (for the linkage tabs)
- Die-namics Blueprints 28 (mini circle to cut the holes in the front panel and the banner for the sentiment)
- Die-namics Scattered Stars
There’s plenty of time to participate in this awesome challenge, so join the fun! My intention this year is to participate in all three categories… let’s see if I can make it. Here are the cards that I made last year, for the Innovation Master category and for the CAS category. Until next time!
This post is also available in: Español
