Party Animals! Expanding Card for New Baby

One of the pastors at our church just had a baby (Everly Grace), and gave me a great reason to create a fun expanding card! I'd never made an expanding card before, and I wanted to use all of the great little party animals I have in my stash, as I just got the Party Animal and Holiday Party Animal sets in recently. I also wanted to try the partial die-cutting method again, as my previous attempt yielded poor results and I learned a new technique for getting it right from Jennifer McGuire's "Rainbow Stamping and On the Edge Die-Cutting" tutorial.

The card I made is a little longer than 11 inches long, but folds down to a standard A2 size so it'll fit in a standard A2 envelope. I cut an 8 1/2" x 11" Superfine White coverstock paper from Paper Source in half lengthwise, to create a 4 1/4" x 11" panel, then scored it at 5 1/2" for the first fold. I then determined where I would want my racoon, and completed the partial die-cut using the tutorial from Jennifer McGuire. After the partial die-cut, I scored the card and ran my bone folder over both score lines I'd created to make crisp folds.  I then stamped all of my fun party critters across the full card, being careful to stamp the raccoon over the die-cut portion effectively. I had to mask off the raccoon stamped on the inside in order to fit the stubborn skunk from You're Stinkin' Cute in there, as their tails go different directions. 

With the card folded shut, I then picked my colors for the bear, raccoon, and skunk and colored them in with just the pink, purple, blue, and grey colored pencils. I stamped and die-cut the gift from Holiday Party Animals for the Raccoon and colored it in, too, before adhering with a foam square. I opened the card and continued to color in the remaining animals, deciding to add in orange and green for some of the critters that were hidden inside the card to help make it pop more when you opened the card. (sidenote: All of my stamping for this card was done with Memento Tuxedo Black ink, and the coloring with various Prismacolor colored pencils.)

I initially planned to have the critters holding letters from Owen's ABCs with maybe the baby's name, or "Welcome!" or something, but realized quickly that I needed to ensure the three animals showing before the card opened would need to spell something out with their three letters alone before opening it up, or it would look weird. That's when I realized I could use the baby's middle name and still ensure the letters didn't show until you open the card. :) Once I'd decided on this, I stamped and heat embossed white letters on Peacock Paper Source coverstock paper, then die cut and adhered them to the card with foam squares. I then stamped the baby's first name, Everly, in Quinn's ABCs, being careful to keep the name from showing when the card was shut (which resulted in that slightly squashed ev at the start...). I opted to color this in with orange and pink to ensure the new colors still popped inside the card once opened.

I decided to add the party banners from Birthday Tags after looking at the card and feeling like something was missing. I added them so that the first banner would only show when the card was opened, and I colored this banner in with all five of the colors, and decided to only use pink, blue, and purple on the other banner so that when it was closed, it still kept the orange and green on the inside only. I added the Cheers to a happy life! sentiment inside the card, and then decided to add "Let's Celebrate!" to a strip of Peacock Paper Source coverstock paper, and adhered this to the back of the top flap (which is what makes this card a little longer than 11" when opened). At this point, I thought I was finished, but felt again like something was missing, mostly when the card was shut. I settled on adding the two birds to the card, which show when the card is open and closed, and colored them in with pink/blue/purple once again, since they're on the unopened portion.

This card is being entered in to the Lawnscaping Challenge #129: Calling All Critters. http://lawnscaping.blogspot.com/2016/05/lawnscaping-challenge-calling-all.html