Go, Badgers!

In honor of today's Super Bowl, I'm posting a sports-themed creation that I made for this weekend's Virtual Stamp Night (VSN) at Splitcoast Stampers. The challenge was to create a card using the colors of your favorite team and to include an element that "pops" on your card. I chose to do a red and white pop-up card featuring Bucky Badger himself. With the word window punch, it's really simple to create a pop-up card--and it's quick, too, which is important for staying within the 45 minute time limit for each challenge during VSN . . .

The centerpieces of my card are the Bucky Badger images. The Bucky in the Loads of Love truck on the front of my card is actually a rub-on tattoo that my mom brought home from a Badger game. He's been hanging on my refrigerator for a while, so this was a great use for him. I used my aquapainter to dampen the tattoo and get it to stick to the paper. The Bucky on the inside of my card is a stamp that I got at one of the t-shirt and souvenir stores on State Street in Madison last April during a trip to Wisconsin to watch the Badgers play for the national championship in the NCAA Frozen Four (Thanks, Dad--I told you I'd use the stamp!). You can also find Bucky online at the University of Wisconsin bookstore's website.

Here's the trick to creating the pop-up mechanism. Score your cardstock to form the card base. The crease made by scoring will help you to position the word window punch in the right place. (For this example, I traced a black line over the scored mark to make it easier to see.) Slide your cardstock as far as it will go into the word window punch. Line up the crease so it is in the middle of the word window punch (I used a permanent marker to draw lines at the center of my word window punch to use as a guide), then squeeze the punch.

Turn your paper around and repeat, punching another word window from the other side of the cardstock.

This will form a set of parallel word punches (punches will be perpendicular to the fold of your card).

Push the cardstock that is between the punches to the inside of the card, then crease.

This will make your pop-up piece stand up when you open the card. One final hint: when you're planning your card, you'll need to be sure to include a piece of cardstock that wraps around the top of the card base. This will hide the word window holes of the pop-up mechanism. In my sample card, I used a piece of Basic Black cardstock for this.

Materials Used:
From Stampin' Up: Loads of Love and Short Order Numbers stamp sets; Basic Black, Going Gray, Gable Green, and Bashful Blue ink; Real Red, Going Gray, Close to Cocoa and Garden Green markers; watercolor pencils; aquapainter; word window punch

Other: Karen Foster Snap Stamps; Bucky Badger stamp