Dancing Leprechaun Interactive Card – Heffy Doodlers Challenge

Hey crafty friends, are you in the Heffy Doodlers Facebook group yet? Every month, we post a new challenge and give you a chance to win a £35 gift card to the Heffy Doodle Shop! (Plus, there’s a ton of nice people and fun shenanigans happening in the group, so I encourage you to join us!)

In February, I asked everyone what they would prefer for March’s challenge theme, interactive cards, or going green. Interactive won, but green got a lot of votes too. And since I’m the coordinator, I thought why not give everyone what they want? So this month, we have two themes to pick from! Make a card using Heffy Doodle products (mostly) that is INTERACTIVE, or has a GREEN theme. (I’m all for getting creative, so if you want to use recycled elements, instead of the color, I’ll accept that too 🙂 )

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To help kick off the challenge, I made this fun dancing Leprechaun (checking off both the interactive and green boxes – bonus)! I’ll have a video later this month showing you how I made it (make sure you are subscribed to my YouTube channel if you want to see it). It uses a simple lever mechanism to make him sway.

I stamped and Copic colored my images from Lucky Friends, then cut them out with the coordinating dies. I added some metallic gel pen details and I used a snow marker to add puffy foam to the top of the beer. I even used my Aqua Shimmer pen to brush a little glitter over the foam. 

Using the Rays the Roof stencil as a guide, I ink blended a rainbow to my 4″ x 5 1/4″ panel. Then I added grass and clouds with homemade stencils. I used the medium slot die and a 1″ circle to cut a slot for the lever and finger notch in the panel. I also cut out three green 5/8″ strips. (The slots and strip dies are from the new More Strips of Ease set from Heffy Doodle. This is an awesome set for making the guts of interactive cards.)

Glue two of the strips together for a stronger pull tab. Then line them up on the top of the panel and Mark where they will intersect (tilt the vertical strip as far as you want it to go in the closed position). Punch a hole through the strips and connect them with a mini brad. (You don’t want this to be too tight, the strips should be able to swing around the brad easily.)

Stamp PULL ME on the horizontal tab. Then, slide the vertical tab in through the slot from the back. Add foam tape above and below the pull tab, as well as around the rest of the panel, being careful not to restrict movement of the tabs.

Attach the panel to your card base. (I wish I had cut finger notches in the card base too.) At this point, I realized the slot was a little too wide for my vertical tab. I glued tiny strips to either side to shorten it up a bit.

The coordinating die for the pot has a slit cut at the top. Slide the tab up through it and glue it to the card, making sure not to accidentally glue it to the tab. Trim the excess tab and decorate with your images. (I had to cut the leprechaun’s legs down a bit to fit him in the pot.)

While I was making this card, I was chatting with my friend Tanna. I couldn’t figure out what to do to make the gold glitter Lucky sentiment pop (it was getting lost in the grass). She suggested I create a drop shadow and it worked great! I love having crafty friends! Who do you craft with? Did you know that Lesley (the owner of Heffy Doodle) usually livestreams on Fridays? You can come craft along and chat with everyone! I try to post it in the Heffy Doodlers Facebook group too.

Now are you feeling inspired to enter this month’s challenge? Head on over to the Facebook group and enter your card in this month’s album!

To enter, post a picture of your project in the March 2020 Challenge album (not the comments). Enter as many cards as you like. New projects only. The winner will be randomly chosen from all entries posted prior to Midnight (UT) on April 5, 2020. You are not limited to cards, feel free to post tags, scrapbook pages, home decor projects, etc. Just be sure the bulk of the stamps and dies used are from Heffy Doodle. Good luck and have fun!