May The Force Be With You

Hello, Welcome to my second project for the lovely month of May! Earlier this week in my first blog post, I mentioned that I will be showcasing Ink Road Stamps in an interactive way. Light em’ up cards are so much fun – I love playing with them once I’ve finished creating them and I love giving them away and seeing the reaction on the recipients face. Though there are a lot of instructions and information on how to create cards such as this – I personally found trial and error the best technique! I know probably not what you want to hear – but I did enjoy every single moment in the card making process and learnt a lot simply by playing with the LED lights.

Because interactive cards can be more time consuming I’ve kept the card layout and technique simple – I love grid layouts (it’s my go to whenever I’m trying something new)… so like my first card I’ve used cardstock and simple stamping in black ink. The most important part of making a card like this is what is underneath the card front! For this I’ve taken photo’s to help explain the process.

After using my PixScan mat and Silhouette Cameo to neatly cut out the ‘die cut’ outline of the stamps, I placed them on my grey card front to give me a visual for both the switch and the LED light placement. Using a pencil I marked on my grey card front where I needed to punch holes for the LED’s – once the holes were punched I layered my card front on to my card base to mark where the LED lights needed to be adhered to.

You can see in the photo that I’ve marked my LED’s, traced the switch/battery and clearly marked where the positive (+) and negative (-) is on my white side folding card base. Nobody will see this bit so make sure you mark each part clearly.

Once everything has been marked I then proceeded to create the circuit. The photo shows where the copper tape needs to be placed to make the lights work. I’m using Pear Blossom Press Power Pack and Chibitronic LED’s – and you can find more information about circuits and LED lights on their blogs. Very simply put I connected the positives, connected the negatives and the LED lights once adhered completes the circuit. The lights will work once the button on the switch is pushed down.

TIPS: I think the most important tip I have is to make sure the copper tape is properly making contact with the LEDs – I had a few minor issues where the last LED wasn’t lighting up, and by simply apply pressure to the LED resolved the issue.

Test the lights. ALWAYS!

From here I stamped the Droid Please images on my silhouette cut outs. I stamped the sentiment on my grey card front and adhered each of the star wars characters in a grid formation. I then adhered this to my card base – with its clearly marked out pencil marks which ensured the card front and base matched up perfectly! Lastly I added the stamped/cut out image (of the Rebel Alliance logo) to my card front, directly where the switch button in located.

Here is the finished card – all lit up!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed my project tutorial today – using LED’s for card projects is so fun. I could have use this technique with a number of Ink Road Stamps – Lit AF, Majestic AF,Expecto Stampo, Iconic just to name a few…

Happy Crafting!

Samantha