Teddy Bear Note Card Gift Set and Box

 Have we all fallen in love with the Teddy Bear Parade cartridge or what?!  I was never even a teddy bear kind of kid, but this little cartridge is so much fun to use!

Speaking of fun.... Before I started this card set, I had a little fun just making some bears.  I wanted to play with  how to make them look different, dimensional, textured.  The most obvious thing is flocking powder, but in my extreme cheapness, I only had flocking powder that I picked up on clearance-- and not a bear color in the bunch!  That forced me to be creative.

Top (starting from left): Bear inked in brown and black with head cut and reapplied, Bear inked in brown and black with a Glossy Accents nose.  Bottom (starting from Left):  Bear dry-brushed with brown acrylic paint with white accent on nose and popped up snout, Panda bear made from hand-altering white layer, Bear embossed with Cuttlebug Swiss Dots and hand-drawn stitching to look like a toy

A few how-to hints:

For reapplying a head, I added a hidden modification...

For dry-brushing, I just used a cheap nylon brush and acrylic paint...

For the panda, I used two base cuts, hand-cutting to remove legs, arms, ears, and to add big-ole panda eyes from the white layer.  (I never used the panda in my note card set, but included him here anyway since I thought he was fun!)

On to the note card set!

Each card finishes at 4-7/8" x 4-7/8".  The simple reason for that: the manufactured envelopes I decided to use mandated my size!  So for each card, I cut cardstock at 9-3/4" x 4-7/8", scoring to fold at the center.

Beary Good Swimmer.... Okay, let's face it:  it is hard not to use "beary" with this project.  I am going to apologize now for that but I won't really stop!

Crafty Details for Beary Good Swimmer:

• Base mats cut at 4-5/8" square (clouds) and 4-3/4" square (orange).
• Bear cut at 3-1/2" from Teddy Bear Parade Lite Cartridge.  (This is the one that was inked and has a shiny nose due to Glossy Accents.  His swim shorts were embossed with a Cuttlebug stripe folder.   The bear was popped up 3/8" at his head only; his lower body was adhered flush to the paper.
• Background (cloud) paper printed from Imagine Best Friends --trimmed down from a 9" square for that scale.  
• Goggles and Duck floatie were cut from vinyl to get a plastic look!  For the goggles, I placed the vinyl cut onto acetate (recycled from a cartridge clamshell) and hand-trimmed around it!  The goggles are popped up 1/16".  For the duck floatie, I placed the yellow vinyl directly onto the black paper base for that shape and accented with orange vinyl for the duck bill.  The floatie is popped up 3/8".
• Water was cut from Ocean of Words (page 49) at 1-1/4".  The top layer is popped up 1/16".

Beary Believable Rudolph...

Crafty Details for Beary Believable Rudolph:

• Base mat cut at 3-1/4" x 4-3/4" (dark blue sky).
• Bear cut at 3-1/2" from Teddy Bear Parade Lite Cartridge.  (This is the bear with the re-attached head).  Accessories were inked and accentuated with a micro pen.  The "shiny red nose" was made that way with Glossy Accents!  Nose and holly were popped up 1/16".  Bear body was popped up 3/8".
• Building cut from Imagine Santa's Village at 3-1/2", trimmed down to fit a width of 4-3/4".  The white of the card base was left uncovered at the bottom since it was snowy!

Arrrgg!  Pirate Bear....

Crafty Details for Pirate Bear:

• Base was printed and cut from Buccaneer at 4.7" (map).
• Bear cut at 3-1/2" from Teddy Bear Parade Lite Cartridge.  (This is the bear that was dry-brushed with brown paint).  Scarf was inked in black with micro pen for details.  The sword and hook were cut from metallic paper.  His vest was glued flush at the shoulders and popped up 1/16" at the hem.  Bear body was popped up 3/8".

For Beary Sweet Baby....

Crafty Details for Beary Sweet Baby card:

• Base mat was printed from Word Collage at 4.7" on my Imagine, and trimmed to 4-3/4".  I used the 'print only' function, selecting a blue from the built-in colors.  
• Bear cut at 3-1/2" from Teddy Bear Parade Lite Cartridge. (This was the bear that was embossed and "stitched" with micron pen.)  Bear was popped up 1/8".
• Bow was glued with E6000 to ensure that it wouldn't pop off.

As you can see, as I progressed, my cards got a bit simpler!  I realized that the Imagine cartridges were PERFECT for fast backgrounds!  Making the bears first also helped me get ideas for the cards I would make later!

So.... I thought these would be a cute gift!  I found a perfect box on Sweet Tooth Boxes!

This box is from page 60 of Sweet Tooth Boxes, cut at 9-1/2" on the Expression.  (To see my tip on hiding the tick marks on 3D cricut cuts, click here to see a previous post that explains that technique.)  The papers for this were printed from Word of Mouth on my Imagine.  I made it into 'bear paper' when I added bears by cutting matte brown vinyl bears at 1" (base bear cut on the Teddy Bear Parade cartridge).  Transfer paper made it very easy to apply to the box lid after being cut but before being assembled.  

This project was so much fun to make!!  I hope you enjoyed this card set as much as I liked making it!  

Thank you for checking my blog post today!  You can see many of my previous paper projects by visiting My Project Gallery (or click here)!