Interactive Slider Card: Coaster Critters Add-On Die from Lawn Fawn

 Yesterday I shared a card that I'd made with some of the Coaster Critters stamp & die sets by Lawn Fawn:

• Coaster Critters stamp & die sets
• Coaster Critters Flip Flop stamp & die sets

For today's post  I took those stamp sets--along with the Coaster Critters Slide On Over Add-On die to create an interactive card.

Coaster Critters Slide On Over Add-On die

Slider dies are a fun way to make a card interactive. There are several different companies that make slider  dies, but this one is unique. The curve matches the curve of the rollercoaster in the Coaster Critters set. It really completes the set, in my opinion.

Lining up the slider die before cutting

After I made my background on the card front, I placed the main roller coaster piece where I wanted it to go on the card (but did not adhere it yet). I then put the slider die up against it. I taped the slider die down, and removed the coaster piece. Then I cut out the slider with my diecut machine.

The slider die cuts an opening in the middle of the card front.

Hold onto that piece--it it not trash!

Back side of card front: foam--leave space!

Then I flipped the card front over, and put double-stick foam pieces on its back, leaving room around the diecut hole. My foam is quite thick. If you are worried about it, though, you could double the thickness. The card requires space for a disc that will move through the hole. (Make sense? No? Keep reading!)

Front of card--white space is the front of the card base.

After placing the foam on the back of the card front, I stuck the card front (now magically with the rest of the design, including the colored coaster) to the card base. The hole from the slider die--against the white card base--left a white space. Time to remedy that!

Covering the white space

Having kept the piece cut from the card front when I diecut the slider, I added some adhesive to the back of it (not foam--just a flat adhesive) and placed it, though the hole, against that white area from the card base. Voilà! 

Since that piece is flat and on a flat area, there is still space from the foam for the slider mechanism.

Add foam to the sliding disc (not this much!).

In order to actually make the card interactive, we have to add a piece to move in that gap left by the foam behind the front. The standard is to use a penny--they are inexpensive, circular, and easy to find (maybe not as easy anymore, now that credit/debit payments are so common).

I don't like using pennies. It just feels like a waste of money. Yes, I am the kind of person who still picks up a penny from the ground. ("Find a penny, pick it up, and all day you'll have good luck!") Besides, pennies are rarer--it actually costs the US Mint more money to make pennies that the value of a penny. Many countries have done away with a 1-coin (examples: Canada and the European Euro), but we Americans tend to cling to our traditions, so we still have pennies, even if they are worth less than the effort to make them. 

I used a washer here. A penny is about 3/4" in diameter, so I used a washer that is about that size. As slider cards have become more popular, some companies sell plastic discs that are 1/2" in size, and an Amazon search for "slider for cardmaking" pulls up 1/2" as well. 

What's a washer? It's that flat, usually metal, circular piece with a hole in the center. It's usually used as a bit of a separator, like between a nut & a bolt when assembling things. Here's a link to Home Depot's page of them.

I put the washer through the gap created by the slider die, then I added a bit of foam to it. *I ended up trimming the foam on the washer so it wasn't quite this long on either side--I wanted it to move more easily around the curves on the coaster. After removing the paper on the foam, I attached my little critter in the coaster car (see photo at the beginning, or you can see it at the top of the photo below).

Materials used

There's a great video on the Lawn Fawn webpage for the Slide On Over Add-On. You'll have to skip to the last half or so, as the first part is making a regular card. One thing she recommended, was to run antistatic powder (I use the Embossing Buddy) through the opening of the slider hole after attaching the card front to the card base, and again around the side edges of the little foam on the washer (before you remove that top paper and stick it to the critter in the coaster car). The powder will remove stickiness from whatever it touches, so the washer should move more easily.

I hope that you are well and happy. Enjoy!