Today, we’re kicking off a CRAFTY Collaboration Blog Hop with Pear Blossom Press and Heffy Doodle! As a member of both Design Teams, I am super happy to have the chance to show off both of these companies which I love so much! Come hop along with us and see some awesome light-up cards! So, let’s light it Up!

Lets Light it Up!

This card does have a lot of steps, but it is truly something that anyone can do, if we just break down the design into separate elements, it becomes much easier to understand and replicate. So that’s what I’ll be doing, and it will be a little longer than my average blog post, but please hang in there?!

All of my supplies are listed and linked at the bottom of this post, if you are interested in anything that I’m using today!

Now you can see what we are working towards, let’s break it down.

Creating the Background

1. Cut a piece of Grape Soda cardstock down to 4.25 x 5.5 inch (a2 size) and begin ink blending from the bottom with Something Borrowed. This is a light blue which will act as our transition shade, so take this up to at least half way, but add more colour to the bottom 1/3 and allow the colour to soften off after this by applying less pressure to your brush.
2. Now, darken the bottom even further with Dress Blues, which is a deeper navy shade. Bring this up no more than 1/3, but letting it lighten to blend into the Something Borrowed. (We will go over this transition shortly, so don’t worry too much about it now.)
3. To further deepen the very bottom, add some Hoodie, which is a medium grey shade. Don’t apply too much, and you won’t see the grey at all, it will just deepen that blue.
4. Afterwards, clean your work surface, and flip the panel to work on the purple side.
5. Use Drive In as your transition shade, as it is a blue-purple which will help the blend a lot. Follow the same steps as your blue transition shade, making sure the these colours overlap.
6. Now, deepen that purple on the bottom with Glam, which is a super saturated, deep purple. Repeat the same steps as with Dress Blues.
7. Once you have all of these colours & areas in place, repeat the steps to really help each one blend into the next. Make sure you include lots of overlap between the shades as this will give you the smoothest transitions & blend. The colour might look a little blotchy at first, but it should settle as the inks dry, but if there is an area you are still unhappy with at this point you can always go back in to soften it.

Die Cutting it Up

1. Firstly, cut your ink blended panel with the Stars Cover Die, and be sure to save all of those stars that get cut out because they will come in handy for a future project, I’m sure! (I like to store these in the packaging with my die itself.)
2. Now, decide where you want your 3 lights to go, and cut the special flashing die from the Fairy stamp & die set. (You can use a small circle instead, if you don’t have the actual die that I used.
3. Cut out small pieces of silver glitter cardstock, big enough to adhere over the back of each of the stars that the cover plate cut. I actually just used a circle punch from my stash which luckily happened to be the perfect size. I cut down the circles into halves & quarters to cover the small stars. Don’t forget to leave the holes for the lights uncovered at this stage.

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Let’s Light it Up!

I used one of the awesome Twinkle Lights for this card, and they are so perfectly magical! They really do work well with this design, but you could use them for SO MUCH MORE too! Think flickering candles, flashing signs, Christmas/Holiday decorations or even control panels!

Positioning your lights & adhesive is important

1. Take on of the Twinkle Lights out of the packaging and add the battery into the housing, making sure that the positive side is facing upwards. Test them to make sure you have them fitted correctly.
2. Place one of the LEDs behind each of the holes you made, making sure that the LED is facing the front of the card. Fix the light in place with some tape and then repeat for the other two lights as well. Once all 3 are in position, check them again to make sure that they are facing the right way.
3. Decide where you want your button to be, and allow the wires to naturally curl to lay flat, before adhering your power pack/button using double sided adhesive. Apply a piece of tape to the wires as well to make sure they stay flat.
4. If you have a single hole for each light, you are probably done with this now, but if the hole is much bigger,.or includes additional holes such as mine, then it would be a great idea to add more of those silver circles over too, so you don’t see the white cardbase when your lights are off. (I secured mine with a few strips of adhesive, and you can see the placement of these in the photos above.)
5. Lastly, you need to apply foam tape around the whole panel; the one from PBP is AH-MAY-ZING because it’s double thickness, which is the perfect depth for these lights, and it is also repositionable for 30mins before becoming a strong & permanent adhesion. (Again, you can see the positioning of all of this in the photos above.)
6. Now, you can stick this background panel straight onto your A2 cardbase and work on the other elements!

Getting Sentimental…

1. Die cut the word ‘magical’ from dark, Holo glitter cardstock and also double sided adhesive foam; then, adhere them together and set aside.
2. Take a piece of the Pearl effect coloured Vellum from PBP and place the ‘magical’ die onto it, holding it still whilst drawing around the outside with a pencil. This is a quick way to get an outline that will fit as the perfect shadow piece for this word, because it doesn’t come with. Carefully, trim this out, gently rub out any remaining pencil marks and then run through your mini Die cutter between 2 thick paper shims to flatten out the edges so that you can’t even tell it was hand cut!
3. Adhere the die cut word onto the vellum shadow and set aside.
4. To complete the sentiment, stamp ‘Hope your day is’ from another stamp set. Stamp & emboss in Polished Silver onto Huckleberry cardstock and cut down into a strip before setting aside with your other elements.
5. Lastly, you need to create a small ‘push’ that will sit over your button. PBP have a fantastic stamp set for this but I can’t currently put my hands on it, so instead I quickly wrote the word out using on of PBP’s Silver gel pens and trimmed this to a very small strip. This can sit with your other elements for now!

Main Character Energy

1. Stamp 3 of the Fairies, a crown and the Moon image onto HD alcohol marker friendly cardstock in Versafine Onyx Black, then emboss with Clear Gloss to seal that ink in place.
2. Colour your images using your favourite colour combinations (markers I used are listed below.)
3. Using a WOW Embossing Marker, draw details onto your images so that you can heat emboss to up the magic even more! Be sure you only do details you want to all be one colour, before heat setting and moving to the next colours. (I used Polished Silver for their wings, Neutral Ultra Shimmer for clothes and clouds, then to make the moon even more magical cover it in Clear Gloss.)
4. Die cut all of the images with their coordinating dies and add thin double sided adhesive foam to the back of the Fairies.

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Assembling the Card

1. Plan your positioning by laying out the images and sentiment onto the card panel without adhering them down, this way you can move everything round as much as you want before settling on the final design. (I like to call this ‘Auditioning’.)
2. Once you’re happy with the layout, take a quick photo so you can refer back to it if you need to, especially if the card you’re making involves a lot of layering on top of each other, like a flower bouquet for example.
3. Now you can lift each piece up in turn, remove the adhesive backing and/or apply liquid glue and then place back in to the space it came from!
4. I did lose the teensy little riddle for the top of the ‘i’ so I just replaced it with a tiny little gem.

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Hop Directions!

You should have arrived to me from: Kavya

Your NEXT stop in the hop is: Sylvie

Or, head over to Pear Blossom Press or Heffy Doodle to see the full lineup, so you don’t miss anyone!

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Thank You

I know that this was an incredibly long post, so than you for sticking with me! Unfortunately, I didn’t make a video of this because I used my phone to record and I decided to watch Law & Order SVU instead. However, I’m super happy with how this came out so I really wish I had filmed it now! I might go back and redo it at some point if there’s enough interest. So let me know in the comments if you’d like to see that!

If you’d like to see more of my cards for either Pear Blossom Press or Heffy Doodle, then you might be interested in these posts: Under the Sea | Heffy Doodle & Catherine Pooler, Flamazing Scene | Heffy Doodle, Light Up Campfire Birthday Card, Halo Lit Focal Sentiment Design. Honestly, there are so many different projects to choose from here on my blog, because it love to take any chance I have to light it up!

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Please be aware:

As part of my Design Team and Guest Design work I do often receive free products to use, but I only ever recommend products that I genuinely love.

Also, I know how incredibly lucky I am to have these opportunities, but you don’t always NEED the newest products or the ‘full set’.
So please don’t feel that you need everything.
I like to show a variety of brands and products; this way there will be something for everybody to enjoy.

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— SUPPLIES —

Affiliate links are used where available; this is at no cost to yourself and I truly appreciate everyone who chooses to use my links to shop. Thank you

World’s Best Foam Tape Shop at: PBP	Black Cardstock Shop at: PBP	Twinkle Lights Shop at: PBP	Gel Pens Shop at: PBP	A2 Vellum (Colour) Shop at: PBP
Essential Phrases Sentiment Stamps Shop at: HD	Stargazer Backdrop Die Shop at: HD	Magical – Heffy Cuts Shop at: HD	Absotoothly Awesome stamp set Shop at: HD	Absotoothly Awesome Dies Shop at: HD
Clear Gloss – Regular Shop at: WOW USA | WOW UK	Polished Silver Shop at: WOW USA | WOW UK	Neutral Ultra Shimmer Shop at: WOW USA | WOW UK	Embossing Pen Shop at: WOW USA | WOW UK	Milky Way Glitter Gradient Cardstock Shop at: Alt
Something Borrowed Shop at: SBCOM | CPD	Drive-In Shop at: SBCOM | CPD	Dress Blues Shop at: SBCOM | CPD	Glam Shop at: SBCOM | CPD	Domed Ink Blending Replacements Shop at: Scrapbookcom | TRIN
Mini Ink Blending Tool Shop at: Scrapbookcom | TRIN | HD	Dual Speed Heat Tool – **Euro** Shop at: WOW UK	Dual Speed Heat Tool – **UK** Shop at: WOW UK	Dual Speed Heat Tool – **US** Shop at: WOW USA

— My Basic Supplies That I Use On Every Project —

Affiliate links are used

MINI MISTI Shop at: Scrapbookcom | Alt | SBP | Trinity	MISTI – Original Shop at: Scrapbookcom | Alt | SBP	Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive Shop at: Scrapbookcom | SBP | Craftstash UK | Craftstash US	Neenah 80lb Shop at: Scrapbookcom | Alt | Craftstash UK
Neenah 110lb Shop at: Alt	Gemini Jr Shop at: Scrapbookcom | Craftstash UK	Tim Holtz Trimmer 8.5inch Shop at: Scrapbookcom | Craftstash UK | Trinity	Tim Holtz Scissors 7inch Shop at: Scrapbookcom | Craftstash UK | Craftstash US
Tim Holtz Mini Snips 5inch Shop at: Scrapbookcom | Craftstash UK | Craftstash US	Tidy Tray Shop at: Trinity	Pick Up Stick Shop at: Trinity	Reverse Action Tweezers Shop at: Scrapbookcom | SBP
We R Trim & Scoreboard Shop at: Scrapbookcom	Pressure Tool Shop at: Trinity	Mini Trimmer Shop at: Scrapbookcom | Craftstash UK | Craftstash US	9.5 inch Shears Shop at: Craftstash UK | Craftstash US
Bone Folder Shop at: Alt	Self Healing Mat Shop at: Alt | SBC

*Affiliate links are used, where available; this means that I may get a small commission if you purchase using one of these links, at no extra cost at all to yourself. A huge thank you goes to anyone who does purchase using my links, it is so highly appreciated.