Cardmaking

How To Make An Interactive Card That Lights Up

Do you love making extra special and interactive cards for your friends & family? Have you tried creating a card that lights up?

EH Design Ambassador Kelly Griglione is here to walk you through creating an adorable scene that lights up!

Hi Folks! Kelly Griglione here to share this fun light-up card made with the new Lawn Fawn S’more the Merrier set! With many people making alternate summer vacation plans this year, camping and sitting around a campfire with your people has never been more on trend!

Let’s take a quick look at the mechanics of this card …

I built the scene on a separate piece of white cardstock. On the back of this cardstock you can see the slider mechanism which moves the fox to and from the fire. It also has a strip of copper tape which will act as the switch to turn the LED lights on and off. The other thing to note is the fire images I cut out and replaced with a vellum version of the fire. This will of course allow the light to shine through.

The card base is where I built the circuitry to turn the lights on. Starting with the round battery, I’ve run copper tape from the negative side of the battery to the negative sides of the LEDs. The copper tape also runs from the positive side of the battery to the positive side of the LEDs.

I drew a rectangle where the switch would be so I know exactly where to run the copper tape. You’ll notice there is a tiny gap in the tape, which is what controls the LEDs. When the copper tape on the switch (top panel) moves over the gap in the copper tap, the circuit is completed, and the lights turn on!

Did you know that you can step this up even further, and create a fire that actually blinks or twinkles?! If you’re interested in trying this out, there’s an effects sticker that allows you to get this effect.

Here’s the scene, with so many adorable little details that come in this stamp set! I used a mix of watercolors to color the critters, and copics to add the details (some shading, dots, V’s on the owl).

Do you notice something different with the die cuts? Since this is a night scene, and there is not a lick of white in the background of my card, when I put the die cut images with their white edges on my card they totally jumped out. So I thought I’d color all the white edges charcoal. It’s different, but I think it makes them integrate with their scene a little better.

The sentiments in this set are very punny, as you might expect. I put a bag of marshmallows behind the “let’s TOAST to your birthday” and the cutest little s’more on the “S’MORE the merrier” sentiment strip.

And now the fun really begins! I like to make a little story whenever I make a light-up card so there’s some purpose for the light being there. For these scene, the fox had just put his marshmallow on the stick, walked to the fire, and it caught his marshmallow on fire. Oh no! I know there are many who prefer burnt marshmallows, but I prefer a beautifully toasted marshmallow with an oooey-gooey inside.

In hindsight, perhaps I should have colored the marshmallow on the stick black, but then it would look odd in the first position (why is his marshmallow burnt when he’s not even by the fire?!) Ideally the marshmallow would turn from white to black at the same time he moves to the fire and it lights up. But that is way beyond my skill level, ha!

Another thing I spent a good deal of time thinking about was where to place the stick, the tiny fire and the slider mechanism so when the fox is away from the fire, you can’t see the tiny fire on top of the marshmallow.

Here’s what I mean. Now that I moved the fox away from the fire, you can slightly see the tiny fire behind the marshmallow, but it’s not obvious and with everything else going on in the card you might overlook it. I wanted people to be surprised when the fox burnt his marshmallow!

There are stars and a moon also included in this stamp set, but I wanted the focus to be more on the critters and their story. I also didn’t want a plain navy sky. So I used the Essentials by Ellen Constellation Background die which give just enough details. The hills and landscape are created with the handy Essentials by Ellen Landscapes dies.

Thanks so much for taking a look today! I wish you all s’more happiness than you can imagine (and perfectly toasted marshmallows if that’s your thing!)