Christmas Tractor Box Card For Any Occasion

This Christmas Tractor Box Card is perfect card for someone who lives or grew up on a farm or just plain loves tractors! You could use this card for any occasion and the color can be changed to match the brand of tractor. The tractor is an svg cut file that can be purchased at svgcuts.com. You can purchase the single card svg file or the whole ” Home For Christmas File“. It includes four cards and their envelopes.

Materials I Used

Silhouette Cameo 3
12 x 12 American Crafts textured paper in red, green, black, and white
Red or designer red paper
Silver textured paper
Jolee’s Bling half pearls
Carta Bella Decorative Brads ” Christmas Market”
Martha Stewart clear stamp (” ’tis the season”). This set is no longer at Michael’s craft store
Aleene’s Tacky Glues
White ink pad
Makeup sponges
Grey ink pad
Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad
Red ink pad or maybe the Distress tea dye ink

Instructions

Once you’ve purchased the cutting file, make sure to print off the included PDF. It helps to see just how many sheets of each color are required and what you’ll need to cut. It’s also a good idea to watch Mary’s assembly video before putting this box card together. Then, re-watch it as your putting it together. One important Tip that I have: make sure to use a heavy card stock, especially for the axle and the base of the tractor. Most of the weight of the card is on the axle area, so you’ll want to make sure to use a thick sturdy card stock.

Cutting Out Your Pieces

First things first, cut out the tractor pieces, and remove any of the little paper pieces that do not belong. Next, place all the pieces that go together and layer them in the order that they will be glued together. It’s much easier to organize each section of the tractor in the beginning so you’re not searching for pieces while gluing. It also keeps you from loosing any of the small parts.

Inking The Edges

If you want to add a little color and dimension to your Christmas Tractor Box Card, try rubbing a little ink around the edges of the paper cutouts. I used a Ranger Distressed ink in the Fired Brick color to go around the red areas. Then, I inked the tire treads with a white pigment ink. This really helped to make the tires stand out. I used a light grey ink to go around the pipe and the sentiment piece. When I finished inking the edges, I stamped my sentiment on the message part of the card. This will go on the back of the box card.

Gluing The Layers

There are a lot of different layers to the tires, so I recommend watching Mary’s assembly video while you work on them. She has the pieces cut to fit in a certain way and I wouldn’t have known this, if I hadn’t taken the time to watch how she put everything together. The back tiers and axle are the main base that hold everything together. When gluing this part together, make sure you’re using enough glue to keep it sturdy and let each section dry so the pieces lay flat. You don’t want any rippled tires.

Once you’ve gotten your tires assembled, add the brads. You’re going to need two medium sized brads for the larger rear tires and two small brads for the front tires. I used Decorative Brads from Carta Bella. They are really cute and more fun than the traditional plain brads.

Next, you’re going to glue on the tractor seat, stirring wheel, and lights. When the lights have been glued on let them completely dry. Once they’ve dried, glue on some half pearls or some type of bling that looks like lights. This really gives your tractor some extra dimension.

Adding The Center Layers

When you’ve finished putting the base pieces together and everything is completely dry, glue the decorative panel or lighter red panel onto the left side of the front tractor panel. I used a lighter non textured red. Glue the back tab inside the back of the axle and let dry. Then, do the same with the far right panel. Let these panels completely dry before gluing on the third. The third panel will be placed in the center of the other two. Let this dry before gluing the front of the tractor tabs together.

If you have an electronic cutting machine, I hope you can give this file a try. This has been one of my very favorite box cards so far. I made this card for my dad, because he was raised on our Bryan Family Farm and has an older tractor just like this. We Bryans are so lucky to have it.