House of cards, Uno style

Hello, hello, hello. So this is my second blog post using the new House of Cards pop up dieset, BUT it is the first House of Cards card that I made. I learned a few hard lessons, so I will give some advice and explain the mistakes that I made in hopes that you can learn from them, and have an easier time (I lost count of how many times I put it together and took it apart lol) Please make sure you watch Karen’s assembly video (at the link above) she gives the best tutorials, my blog is more of helpful tips and what not to do. Lol.

All the fun is in the reveal, to see this card in action please check out my FACEBOOK page, feel free to join if you would like to share your own crafty creations. You can also see a video of this card on my INSTAGRAM page.

My first piece of advice is to cut a few pieces from cardstock and play with them a bit to get a feel for how they connect. It is actually a pretty easy mechanism to work with, my mistake was trying to do a different design than what the other design team members were doing and cutting right into the only pack of cards I had at the time🤦🏻‍♀️ (I had to get them mailed to me because I couldn’t find them locally, so you think I would have been more careful)

1- first advice tip, assume nothing- when my son showed me the size of the box I thought they would be a perfect fit, but when I got them and opened the box I realized they were half the size. They were too small for the die, and the connection pieces would not cut out. The actual dies cut the cards to be 1 1/2” x 2 1/8”, Karen is selling playing cards that are 1 1/2” x 2 1/4” so a bit of the edges will trim off. If you are purchasing other cards try to get them close to these sizes. And too big is better than too small.

2- but I was on a mission (I get tunnel vision and don’t think through the process, don’t be like me, plan your house) So with some advice from Karen, I decided to emboss the cards onto black cardstock.

B- I glued down some of the cards face up, and on the backs I glued the backs of the card facing out.

C- then I diecut. Another mistake I made was diecutting when the glue was still wet, so some of the cards shifted when I was dicutting. (See wild card with arrow)…. Slow down it’s not a race.

3a- here is what a big x looks like.

B- here is a small x, if I were doing this again I would try to get the cards too match.

4a- believe it or not this was my big mistake (I just didn’t realize it yet) . I was so excite, this set up used every card in the deck and it was exactly what I wanted. 2 towers of 4 layers, 2 blue 2s for the front and a wild card for the front. I laid it up against the envelope convinced that my idea would work BUT I didn’t take into consideration that when in the card the mechanism will push the house up outside the limits of the card 🤦🏻‍♀️ I was soooooo bummed when I figured that out. If I would have made the card base bigger, then it wouldn’t have fit in the envelope.

5a- make the card base as shown below, make sure to use a gusset, I should have made mine a bit bigger.

B- add the white panels as shown below

6- I wanted to add some colour so I added the triangles as shown below.

7a- I did some word surgery to Happy Birthday and the Happy Birthday Shadow to separate them. Cut each twice, then just fussy cut out the sections you need

B- I die cut “child” and “nd” from the Alphabet set, from black and white and layered as shown.

C- I added the pieces to the front as shown.

8a- I die cut 2 mechanism, and added one over each fold. And add the Large X as shown.

So this is where I realised my mistake and that not all 4 layers will fit. My BIG problem is I already cut all the cards, and my third and fourth layer was all small x’s, (I needed to drop the fourth layer and have the third layer be big Xs) the problem I found was if small x’s are on the top row, not attached to anything above or beside, the card won’t fold properly, at least not with out help. So I had to change them to big X’s that connected together end to end. BUT I was out of cards 🤦🏻‍♀️

9- i needed more Uno cards but couldn’t find the small ones sooooo I bought big ones. But, yes another but, I could only find cards with a green backs so I cut out 2 for each and adhered them back to back so the green isn’t visible. I thought it would look funny if only the third row was different so I took apart the whole house and mixed them in so there would be a variety of cards through out both houses. I do actually like how it looks.

10- it’s an inside joke, but I needed some letters for some songs so I diecut them from the Mini Alphabet and Numbers.

A few other concerns, because of ALL the layers the card didn’t want to close all the way, so I should have made the gussets bigger. I found that after a couple of days being in an envelope it stayed shut better. If I were making this card again, I would try to find a better size of Uno Cards (or what ever cards I’m using) and not 3 layers per card (card, cardstock, card) , or go bigger from the start, and if I’m trying a different style I will PRACTICE first.