A Cardinal in a Snowy Crate Box Card

Hi, this is Laura on the blog today. I’d love to show you a box card that I made with a stunning die-cut cardinal and dimensional pine needles on branches made with beautiful cutcardstock.com papers. Nothing says January winter like a cardinal that you spot in nature.

First, I uploaded the design into Design Space. I changed the colors to the card stock colors I already had on-hand.

The cutcardstock.com colors that I used are:
Silk Glitter Opulent Opal 12×12 Card Stock
Stardream Metallic Saturn 126lb 8.5 x 11 Card Stock 
Orange Zest Card Stock
Vanilla Bean Brown Card Stock
Canvas Textured Beetle Black
Canvas Textured Mantis Green Card Stock
Lessebo Colors Hunter Green 83lb Card Stock
Red Pepper Card Stock

Second, I cut the images out on my Cricut. It is important to group like-color cuts together because it can become confusing if you don’t. For example, you do not want too many shades of a color. This simplifies things.

Third, I layered the cuts. For example, I used dark green pine needles as the base. Then the light bright green on top of the dark needles and it’s shimmering branches. You can fluff out the needles to make the branches look more dimensional.

For the crate, I dry embossed the panels to look like real wood grain. Next I added white glitter card stock to the crates folded over a triangle in the front. It looks like snow on the box card’s crate. Here’s a close-up of how the colors look against the glitter card stock. I love how it came out.

The pine cone is made of shimmery brown card stock — and if you pull the pine cone’s petals up, that adds more shimmer and makes the die-cut look more dimensional. 

Finally, the finished project can be folded on either side into an envelope that fits the final crate, cardinal, and pine needles, fitting perfectly inside the envelope.