Tuesday 7 August 2018

Designer Challenge Star Accordion Book/Card.

Good morning friends

It's time for Karen Burniston's monthly Designer Challenge, and the theme for the August challenge is "Charmed".  With so many Charm sets to choose from, I think you are in for some great inspiration from the Design Team!

For my Charmed challenge card, I wanted to see if I could make the Charm Accordion work as a Star Book. It did, and easily! I'm very happy with how well it turned out and I think this would be a fun table decoration for the holidays, done in different colours and with seasonal charms.


I pulled out some polka dot patterned paper from my stash, and cut six Charm Accordion bases. Two from yellow, two from blue, one from pink and one from green. I also cut the scalloped 'icing' pieces from the Cake Pop-Up, two long and two short for each of the pages. I like how they give a different look to the Charm Accordion when they are adhered to the top and side edges!

This is the first page of the expanding card, what you will see when you take it out of the envelope. The greetings start with 'make a wish!'


For each page, I used a circle from the Circle Charm Accordion to cut a window from the centre of each accordion panel.  Before adhering the pages together, I added a small square of acetate to the back of every other page. That gave me a 'window' on each page to adhere the charms to.

Each of the pages was folded in half along the score line, then the right side of the first yellow page was adhered to the left side of the green page. I continued until all the pages were adhered together using a strong adhesive. I used Lineco PH Neutral adhesive, which is also sold on Karen Burniston Riley's site. Once all the pages were adhered together and I had my book - I adhered the scalloped borders one by one.

To create the black frames around each window, I nested the same circle die used to cut the window and a larger zig-zag circle die from the same set. Holding them together with removable tape made cutting all twelve black frames really easy.


I added a variety charms to the acetate, with little hearts and a touch of glitter. Each page also got die cut words combined form the various Word Sets and a black die cut candle with more glitter. The hearts from the Coffee Charms cut three at a time so that makes short work of adding little hearts to your projects.


The second page says 'celebrate' and 'congrats' and has a donut and party hat charm.



The third page says 'Happy Birthday' and has the party hat charm and a cupcake. I used as many scraps as I could from the patterned paper circles that fell away when the windows were cut into the centre panels. That way everything coordinates.



The fourth page says 'Hello friend' and has a cupcake and present charm.



The fifth page says 'Birthday Greetings' and has the gift charm and an ice cream cone. For all the charms, I snipped off the hanging hole so make them embellishments rather than charms.



The sixth and final page simply says 'enjoy' with a white panel for our note and signature. There is an ice cream cone and a balloon die that I chose not to add a string to.


Since there isn't any foam tape (!!) the card will fold flat and fits perfectly in a 5 x 7" envelope. I will add an extra stamp on it though, since there are a lot of layers and therefore it likely weighs too much for a single stamp.

Initially I planned on using magnets to hold the card closed on the final two pages, but realized that it works better to fold flat so the final pages were adhered together.


When it comes out of the envelope, you get this fun 'Star Book' look for your greeting card! It stands so nicely on it's own and would make a nice birthday decoration as well as a card.


I hope I've inspired you to use your Charm Accordion die in a different way! For those that want to add my card to their Pinterest board(s), here is a group photo shot for you:



Be sure to check out our Design Team's projects and see their take on the challenge. Their blogs are linked on the right. Karen Burniston will have her project and a big group post on her blog tomorrow (Wednesday). You can find Karen's blog HERE.

2 comments:

  1. Love this card! Love the colors and love the idea of using the charmed dies!!!

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