How to Make a Happy Veganniversary Card on the Cricut or Silhouette

I’m not a vegan – still too much of a weakness for cheese, but I’ll work on it – but I have an increasing number of friends who are. If you are a vegan, I highly recommend you visit FriFran.com, an amazing resource for both vegans and coeliacs! In the meantime, here’s a card that will enable you to congratulate those who have taken the plunge!

This isn’t just a pop-up – it’s a pop and twist card, which means it moves around 90 degrees when you open it.  It’s really rather big when you open it! But I like it that way. It also uses Print and Cut, which I am absolutely convinced is magic!

You will need:

• 2 A4 (or letter, if you’re in the US or Canada) sheets of white sticker paper
• 2 sheets of A3 cardstock (tabloid or ledger, if you’re in the US or Canada!). It will work with 140gsm cardstock, but if it’s heavier the pop-up will be more sturdy!
• A4 sheet of patterned paper
• Small amount of holoographic/metallic adhesive paper
• Glue
• Our SVG file

You’ll need to use the stylus attachment on your machine.

Preparing the file:

1. Open a New Project and Import the File (veganpopandtwistcard.svg, or whatever format you’re using!)
2. Click on the pieces and Ungroup
3. In the right hand margin, choose each of the animal faces and click on ‘Flatten’ (at the bottom of the margin)
4. Select all of the letters in ‘THANK YOU!’ and Attach them
5. Convert the lines in the larger piece to score lines, as shown below.
6. Choose the piece and its score lines and click on Attach
7. For the main pop-and-twist piece, apply score lines as shown below:
8. Select all of the letters in ‘HAPPY VEGANNIVERSARY. And…’ and Attach.
9. Convert the line in the card (behind ‘Happy Veganniversary’) to a score line (by selecting it in the right-hand margin and clicking on the Scissor icon before selecting the Stylus (Score) icon when the Layer Attribute panel pops up
10. Select the card and the score line and Attach.

You’re ready to cut!

Cutting the pattern:

1. Fold the large plain card section along its score line. Apply glue to the patterned paper, and apply it (the whole of the sheet, just leaving a border around the edge) to the plain piece as shown. I know it’s tempting to cut everything with your machine, but I found this much easier to get right when I trimmed the curves on the corners by hand (with scissors)! 
2. If you’ve never used Print and Cut before, just be aware that you need to have your printer ready, connected to the computer. It is surprisingly easy to use though! What happens is the printer prints a thick black border around the images, so that (in the next step!) your Cricut can see where it needs to cut (NOT around the border…it just tells the Cricut where the border is in relation to your images). Anyway – you want this to be printed on sticker paper.
3. Once printed, move the paper (don’t take the backing off!) to the cutting mat. Your Cricut will instruct you to insert the mat. At this point, it’ll magically cut around the faces of the animals!
4. Cut the other pieces out – once you’ve cut the stickers, they all need to be on cardstock, APART FROM the messages (i.e. ‘Happy Veganniversary! And..’ and ‘THANK YOU!’ which I’ve cut from adhesive metallic/holographic paper.
5. You’ll end up with something looking like this:
6. …as well as the messages for the inside and front! PHOTO

Assembling the pattern:

1. In the plain piece that has the animal face shapes attached to it, crease over the fold lines back and forth several times so it moves easily
2. Peel the backing from the animal face stickers and attach them to the corresponding shapes on the plain piece.
3. Make the folds again.
4. Take the ‘THANK YOU!’ message and apply to transfer paper.
5. Apply to card.
6. Now, apply transfer tape to the letters from the cover message (‘Happy Veganniversary! And…’) and remove them from their backing:
7. Now, apply them to the blank folded card:
8. Fold over – several times, back and forth – the pieces in the pop-up mechanism (the piece shown below) until the folds are really flexible. 
9. Pushing from behind, fold in the lines that are longwise across the middle of the card, until you get this sort of shape:
10. Once folded in properly, they will form an arrow shape as shown. Fold over firmly.
11. Open up again and apply glue to the two triangular sections as shown. (Here, I’ve used PVA glue – but I actually think a glue roller will work better as you have to wait a while for PVA glue to dry and you can’t be quite as precise with its application)
12. Take the piece you made in Step 1 (the patterned piece on top of the large piece, with a fold in the middle). You need to apply the folded piece (from step 11) to the centre of the large folded card section, with the long line across the middle going exactly across the centre of the card, as shown. Allow to dry.
13. Once dried, carefully fold the card shut and open it again.
14. Now, position the piece you made with the animals’ faces on and rest it on top of the piece you glued to the card’s centre.
15. Fold the edges over, where the score lines are, and apply glue as shown (NB: It’s on the top-left section, and stops at just the point where the diagonal cut begins):
16. (On both sides!) Again, here, glue is applied at the squared-off point before the fold (and not in the section that ends in a diagonal shape):
17. Press the pieces (i.e. the animal faces you’d just folded over!) to the glued base pieces and leave to dry thoroughly.
18. Once it’s completely dry, slowly shut the card and open it a few times. It’ll pop up quite dramatically!
19. Here you go! 🙂

 

There’s space at the bottom of the card for you to write your message.

Want to make this card yourself? You can get our Veganniversary card files here.