Tea-riffic Birthday

Cardmaking
Written By Cecilia Huster

This is the card I’m creating in today’s video. It has this fun, wobbling effect, created with an action wobbler. I’ll give you tips for helping your mug wobble better in this video. I’m also using Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Pencils to achieve a loose watercolor effect when coloring. 

Watercoloring

I’m starting by watercoloring my reindeer. To do that, I’ve placed the dies on some watercolor paper and roughly drawn around them. By not getting into the details at this stage, I make it easier for me to keep my watercoloring loose and relaxed. 

Today I’m only using four watercolor pencils. They’re 

Using just a few colors can help make watercoloring more manageable. 

I’ve already filled in the areas with the pencils and now I’m adding water and more pigment. 

The nose and insides of the ears will be Spun Sugar. 

The flowers I’m coloring with Spun Sugar and Worn Lipstick. 

Switching to the brown colors, the antlers will be mostly Tea Dye with some Ground Espresso toward the bottom.

Reindeer Head

The head of the reindeer is also going to be Tea Dye with shading in Ground Espresso. 

In watercolor we always move from light to dark, so I’m starting by adding water to the lighter areas on the reindeer head. This is a fairly large area, so I try to make my brush strokes large and expressive. Then I add more Ground Espresso to the edges.

It looks like a hot mess right now, but it’ll come out alright in the end, I promise. 

Finally I make the eyes really dark in Ground Espresso. 

Then I dry everything with my Wagner heat tool. 

Die Cutting

The mug dies I’m using today are by Trinity Stamps, one of my most favorite stamp companies.

This reindeer is from an add-on die set called Freezin’ Season. It also includes a penguin and a melting snow person. Cute and funny, like many Trinity Stamps products. 

Once everything is dry, I cut out my reindeer parts. See the labeled die set photo and cut list above, for help with that. Note that the flower is part of the Beary Cute Mug Die Set. There’s only one, so I had to cut it out six times in my little Sizzix Sidekick.

Assembling the Reindeer

I double up the head and antlers. When you’re creating a wobbling feature, sturdiness is everything!   

Then I add some flowers to the antlers. And I glue down the insides of the ears. 

The way I glue the antlers to the head, is that I place them where I want them, and hold them there with magnets. I add glue to the bottoms and place the head on top. 

Mug & Sentiment

Turning to the sentiment, I’ve got a Trinity Stamps Punny Cup of Tea Sentiment Stamp Set and I’ve selected “Wishing You a Tea-riffic Birthday.”

As I said before, the mug die set I’m using is called the Beary Cute Layered Mug Die Set. I’ve cut the body of the mug from Accent Opaque 120 lbs. 120 lbs is overkill, but I’ve run out of 100 lbs and am waiting for my order. 

I’ve applied anti-static powder to the cardstock and now I’m stamping with Versamark toward the bottom of the mug. I’m heat embossing the sentiment with super fine Gold embossing powder from Ranger. 

I’m doubling up the body of the mug, because that’s the part that will wobble. 

Then I glue the reindeer head to the mug. 

And I double up the cream that goes on top of the mug. 

And then I can glue the cream to the back of the reindeer. 

Once that’s dried, I’m gluing another reindeer head on the back, to make sure the cream and the mug are really well connected. 

Then I can place the nose and the eyes. The nose goes on the end of the brown bridge of the nose. And the eyes go to the left and right of the nose bridge. 

Action Wobbler

I’ve chosen to make only the main body of the mug the wobbling part. The mug die cut with the handle will form the base of my wobbler. 

Here’s the action wobbler. It’s basically two plastic pieces with a plastic spiral between them. The plastic pieces are different, but in my experience it doesn’t matter which part you put where. 

I also used to get fancy to try and find the center of gravity of the wobbly part, but it never seemed to help. So now I just try to put the wobbler roughly in the middle and then I use foam tape to help it wobble better.

In this case, I placed the wobbler behind the reindeer nose. Then I placed the mug base on top of it. 

Background 

Turning to the background, I’m keeping it pretty simple. First I’m using this Waffle Flower Circle Texture Die on a piece of watercolor paper.

Then I’m using the same pink Tim Holtz watercolor pencils I used before. I’m applying Spun Sugar all over the background. Then I add Worn Lipstick to the edges. 

Then I mush around water with a water brush, starting in the center. Again, we’re not going for neat and tidy here. I just want a textured background that matches the pink on the reindeer and flowers. 

This is what it looks like when dry.

To flatten it, I’m gluing it to a white piece of cardstock that’s also 4.25” by 5.5.” Pressing my bone folder against the back really helps the watercolor paper to adhere to the cardstock everywhere. 

Final assembly

We’re on the home stretch! 

I’m putting glue on the back of the action wobbler mug and adhering it to our background. 

Then I’m going to add a couple more flowers. I’m putting one on the eyebrow of our reindeer and two near the bottom right of the mug. 

Finally I put some very pretty Spellbinders gems in the center of the flowers. I’m omitting the one for the bottom flower, because it would interfere with the wobbling action. 

To improve the wobble, I’ve added foam tape to the mug base. I had to add two layers. The important part is not to remove the backing paper. That way the cardstock slides easily on top. I could have added the foam tape to the back of the reindeer instead, but it might have caught on the edge of the mug when wobbling. 




Video showing how I created this card.

Supplies Used

Cecilia Huster
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