Interactive tea card tutorial (in English)

Due to popular demand, I decided to make a tutorial of the rotating interactive tea card that I made as guest designer for My Favorite Things a week ago. Do you remember it? When you rotate the exposed pinked disk, a message trickles from the teapot into the cup.

Here's a video, so that you can see it in action:

It is not a complicated card to make if you follow the instructions, although you do need quite a few supplies. If you don't have them all, you can do wonders with a craft knife. I used:

• A die-cutting machine (and optionally a smaller cutting plate than usual to do some partial diecutting)
• A Mini MISTI (or a stamping block and a steady hand)
• The stitched rectangle and the stitched circle die from the Die-namics Blueprints 15 set (or similar dies)
• The largest die from the Circle Spinner Channels Die-namics set
• The largest die from the Stiched Circles Scallop Frames set
• Black ink
• Embossing ink + platinum embossing powder
• Embossing gun
• Papers from MFT's Farm Fresh Gingham, Lucky Prints and Sweet Celebration Paper Packs, 
• Heavy weight watercolor paper or cardstock
• A small brad
• Foam adhesive and double sided tape
• A craft knife

Of course any of these materials can be substituted by similar ones, but in that case you might have to adapt some of the measures. OK, let's get down to business... I started by making a template using the circle dies from the list:

I diecut the disks out of thin paper and folded them first vertically and then horizontally in half to get the middle point. I poked a hole in the center of both disks, aligned the holes and glued the templates together.

Then I diecut all of the elements. Since MFT's patterned paper is quite thin, I adhered it to some heavy weight white cardstock before die cutting the cups and the teapot. Since the teapot was facing the other way, to flip it, I simply placed the cutting edge of the die towards the white cardstock before rolling it through my Big Shot. 

Using a pencil, I drew two lines at 1/2" from the righthand border of my card panel (cut with the stitched rectangle die) and temporarely adhered the largest Circle Spinner Channel die with the cutting edge towards the paper. I placed all of my elements on the card panel, to see if everything would fit and marked the position of the teapot for later.

I then used a smaller cutting plate (in turquoise on the picture) to partially die cut a groove. You could also just use the die as a template and a craft knife to cut it.

I finished cutting the slit with my craft knife and went on to stamp on the rotating disk... 

I adhered the paper template to the left hand lower corner of the lid of my MISTI with painter's tape and placed the disk in the right hand corner to stamp the message on it.

Then, using the template as a guide, I adhered the stamps from the LLD Cup of Tea set to the inside of the lid of my MISTI...

...and inked and stamped them a couple of times to get a nice crisp result. I also embossed the sentiment "Pinkies Up" from the same set in platinum on the card panel.

After that I placed the stitched circle die 1/2" from the right border (if it's more than that, the text will show when passing through that opening) and die cut it.

I cut a 1 6/8" strip of gingham patterned paper (backed with cardstock) with the stitched rectangle and stictched circle dies to match the panel.

The easiest part was to assemble the card, gluing each of the elements in its place. Here's another look at the finished card so that you don't need to scroll up...

First I glued the table cloth to the panel and then I used foam squares to adhere the yellow teacup on top of the brad and the dotted teacup on top of the yellow one. I adhered the teapot with double sided tape, added an enamel dot to the lid and finally the panel was ready.

I flipped it and adhered a bunch of foam squares to the back, making sure that the disk could rotate freely. The last step was to cut a 9 1/2" x 6" (I scored it at 4 6/8") card base out of some sturdy cardstock and a 4 6/8" x 6" piece of patterned paper. 

I glued the panel to the base and the card was finished... It would have been great to add a little arrow to show the direction that you need to rotate the disk, because we tend to do it clockwise and here we need to do it counter-clockwise to be able to read the text.

I hope this tutorial was clear enough, I think I really need to start making video tutorials, but it still feels overwhelming... If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments. Have a great Friday!