Category Archives: Birthday

One Wild Ride

Today is my brother Martin’s birthday and that’s always a challenge from a card perspective. He has definite opinions on my cards which can be very useful but a trifle intimidating when I’m making his card. Sometimes he’ll say, “it works, but I don’t personally like it” so I just have to hope that this falls into the “it works and I like it” category! He has a couple of motorcycles so when I saw the set One Wild Ride, I knew what was going on his card.

Stampin' Up! One Wild Ride

I actually made this card this morning, the glue probably isn’t quite dry but I was waiting for my order to arrive bringing me the gorgeous luscious copper foil sheets and that happened last night! I thought I’d been efficient getting the stamp set early, but once I saw the copper, I knew I needed it too.

This is actually the first time that I’ve used my copper embossing powder and I really love it – expect it a lot on upcoming cards! Both the image and the sentiment comes from One Wild Ride as does the matching sentiment inside which says “…said no motorcycle rider ever”! I then backed my piece of night of navy (which is an inch smaller than the card stock) with the copper foil and although it looks pretty good in the picture, it’s much more impressive in real life.

Have a great – and creative – Friday.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Moroccan DSP for CAS on Sunday

There’s a really fun sketch at CAS on Sunday at the moment and the challenge is open until the 19th. I encourage you to take a look and have a go.

Stampin' Up! Moroccan DSP and Suite Sayings

And here’s the sketch which inspired my card:

I happened to have some of the Moroccan DSP handy because I’d taken a file folder of DSP with me to the crop last weekend. I tried to pack light and only took one folder of DSP – since I put it with my card stock, it had to fit in a regular folder so only sheets that had been cut already would work. This sketch lends itself perfectly to showcasing a small piece of DSP, I cut that first and then trimmed it down because it was too wide. I decided that dapper denim was going to be the colour that I was featuring, so cut a piece of dapper denim cardstock so that it looked about right. Next I stamped the sentiment from Suite Sayings on a scrap of very vanilla and cut it out with an oval framelit. After that it was simply a matter of construction – I have pieces of very vanilla and whisper white precut at 4 by 5 1/4 inches. They are perfect for both the fronts and insides of cards and it’s handy not to have to jump up every time I need a piece. I use a carl cutter which can cut many sheets at a time and just store them with my card stock – along with precut half sheets that are my card bases. It saves time when prepping for card classes too.

After constructing the card, I cut another piece of the Moroccan DSP to fit on the envelope flap – 6 by 2 1/8 inches is perfect. I use the tombow glue and then trim off the excess paper. Quick and easy and I end up with a coordinating envelope.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

 

Cupcake Cutouts Framelits

This card almost put itself together after I was flicking through the beautiful images of the Serene Scenery DSP stack. This paper made me think of how as children we would blow these seeds off the heads and then make a wish. And since with the cupcake cutouts framelits, I now have the ability to die cut the word wish, it just had to be done.

Stampin' Up! Cupcake Cutouts Framelits and Sweet Cupcake and Serene Scenery DSP stack

I cut the DSP to 4 by 5 1/4 inches because I didn’t need any extra layers – they just didn’t do anything but look fussy. I’ve used cajun craze for the card base even though it isn’t officially in the stack but it worked with the centres of the dandelions and it set off the warmth of the photo beautifully. I obviously used the same colour for the stamping (the sentiment is from the matching Sweet Cupcake set) and the die cut. Just make sure you don’t lose the dot over the i if you’re intending to add it to your card. No, I didn’t – but almost!

Since this is a birthday card, I dry embossed the flap with lucky stars. Seems to fit somehow. And I didn’t have enough left from my DSP sheet because I cut it down oddly – I ended up with many strips trimmed off. But this works.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Vertical Greetings for CAS(E) this Sketch!

I spent Saturday with some like-minded friends and we spent the day crafting. I took along a list of current challenges so that I had something to focus on. Sometimes being surrounded by a lot of product leads me to some kind of mojo paralysis. CAS(E) this Sketch! has a fun challenge this week but I decided to turn it sideways and to let the line of images slump a little so that they weren’t in the middle of the card. Turning the card sideways gave me the perfect chance to use one of the sentiments from Vertical Greetings.

Stampin' Up! Blooms & Wishes and Vertical Greetings

Here’s the sketch which inspired my card:

The flower is from Blooms & Wishes. I started at the right hand side and stamped one of the flowers in melon mambo before stamping the Happy Birthday in rich razzleberry.  Then I spaced out the other three flowers. There was quite a deliberation about which of the enamel shapes would look best – as you can see, I finally decided on the larger of the rich razzleberry circles. There was also agonising over the colour of the card base since either melon mambo or rich razzleberry worked. In the end, rich razzleberry won.

But just to up the melon mambo quotient, I used it to stamp the envelope – both the flap and one of the front corners. A simple way to stamp the flap is to fold the flap over a piece of scrap paper on top of more scrap paper so that all you can see is scrap and the flap. Then you can stamp away without worrying about hitting the rest of the envelope.

Stampin' Up! Blooms & Wishes and Vertical Greetings

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Sunshine Wishes Thinlits Dies

I’ve been intending on putting a number of the flowers cut using the Sunshine Wishes Thinlits Dies onto a card and somehow it just hasn’t happened. I assume due to the amount of product that I have to play with at the moment! But the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches this week, reminded me that I had planned to do this and determined that I’d be adding two flowers!

Stampin' Up! Sunshine Wishes Thinlits Dies and Endless Birthday Wishes

Here’s the banner which inspired my card:

As you can see, I took a mirror image of the sketch – just because the flowers are cut out with the curve to the right hand side. I cut out the flowers in perfect plum and wisteria wonder although I did contemplate elegant eggplant. I cut a sliver of wisteria wonder for my sentiment which comes from the amazingly versatile Endless Birthday Wishes set and stamped that in elegant eggplant. It wasn’t until the time of writing that I realised that I have in fact got three purples on the card. Next it was a matter of constructing the card (on a base of thick whisper white), so that the second flower’s stem was not showing as in the sketch.

I dry embossed the envelope flap with a retired folder, Spring Flowers. It’s handy having a fairly large (and growing!) collection of embossing folders so that I can sort of match the card.

See you tomorrow,

Liz