Balloon Birthday Cards

Both of my kids had birthday parties to go to recently. This means that there were cards to be made!

First, my youngest was invited to the party for a girl in his class. I don't get to make very many girl birthday cards, so this one was lots of fun. We had learned from her mom that she likes to draw with glitter pens, so I decided that she needed some sparkle on her card!

A few months ago I picked up several ombre ink pads at Michaels. They were their Recollections brand. I also bought the Ombre Sentiments: Birthday stamp set from Papertrey Ink and really the two are a perfect match. I used my MISTI to perfectly line up the sentiment three times on a narrow strip of card stock that was mounted on the left side with foam dots. 

The right side, as you can see, was filled with glittery balloons! I dug out several shades of pink and purple cardstock that seemed to go with the ink colors and covered a small piece of each color with double sided tape (2.5" wide, from Stamp On It). Then I punched out 2 different sized balloons from each color. I removed the other side of the paper on the tape and covered each balloon with micro fine glitter from Sweet Stamps. Even after burnishing the glitter, it still made gave the balloons a very white-ish look, so I went over the glitter with a Spectrum Nior alcohol marker in a color that matches the card stock and they were instantly spectacular!

Some of the balloons were glues flat to the card and the other were popped up using two different thickness of foam dots. I loved the way the final product turned out. It was a little bit hard to give it away!

The following day, my oldest attended the birthday party of one of his best friends and fellow Star Wars geeks. My son requested the card be something Star Wars, but had no further suggestions or ideas. After a quick Google image search for "Star Wars cards", I was inspired to make this:

I finished it just barely in time for him to sign it and get it in an envelope before we dashed out the door to the party, so this is my only picture. BB8 was assembled with a variety of circle dies and punches and some hand cut scraps of grey. The balloon on this one is a die (from this Jillian Vance set) and was cut from yellow vellum and white card stock. I was just going to use the vellum, but the black background overpowered it, so I backed it with a white die cut. A little bit of orange and white twine finished things off nicely.

It was reported back to me that the birthday boy liked the card, so I am counting this one as a great success as well!

I hope you liked my cards today. Thanks for visiting, and don't be afraid to leave a comment and say "Hi".

Mother's Day 2016

This is the card I made for my mom for Mother's Day this year. I was inspired by the Vintage Watercolor tutorial on Splitcoaststampers.com. I am completely loving the color scheme here.

The birdhouse was stamped in Vintage Photo Distress ink and the lines softened with a water brush. I used an English Red Marvy marker, scribbled on an acrylic block and picked up with the water brush, to add the red on the roof. I also added some touches of Sepia Marvy, using the fine point end directly on the paper, for some color variation. The tutorial on Splitcoast uses an Elegant Writer pen for these darker bits, but I don't have one of those. I really like the effect the sepia gave.

For the flowers, I inked the small flowers that come in the birdhouse set with the English Red marker, and then tapped it on the Vintage Photo pad to tone it down a bit. There might have been a bit of sepia in there too. The leaves were done with a combo of the Vintage Photo and Sepia. The little twiggy bits are just plain Sepia.

It's amazing to me how dark the Sepia twigs looks against the Vintage Photo birdhouse. I've always considered the Sepia to be a medium brown when I've used it in my other watercolor cards. This combo makes it look so dark!


I finished off the image with a bit of Clear Wink of Stella on just the flowers. I would never have thought to add the wink of Stella until I saw Bonnie Krebbs (the owner and designer, and all around awesome person!) do it at the Adventures in Stamping show in Akron, OH a few weeks ago. It is the perfect finishing touch!

The rest of the card was put together by die cutting a double stitched circle (from Our Daily Bread Designs- but there are lots of companies who make them!) from some kraft cardstock. I then used a couple of Cover-a-Card background stamps from Impression Obsession (Grunge on the kraft and Ticking and the red/burgundy) to add some "texture" to the card. I also used the three inks from the main image to dye a bit of cream seam binding for the bow and corner wrap. I was hoping for something a bit more variegated, but it still works.


Overall, I am very pleased with how this card turned out. I am sure there will be more cards with this vintage color scheme in my future. Thanks for stopping by to see my cards and feel free to leave a comment so I know you were here!

Creative Critters

The current challenge at the Art Impressions blog is "Creative Critters" in honor of their new mini spinner sets. I happened to pick up one of the new sets at the Adventures in Stamping show a few weeks ago, but I happened to choose the one that doesn't include a critter! No worries though- I discovered that the party hat in the Mini Cake Spinner set fit perfectly on Little Whoot!

 

The cake, hat, and Little Hoot were all stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored with my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers. I tried to get some shading/blending but I'm still learning with those. It took a bit of creative masking and the help of my MISTI to squeeze an extra "o" into the greeting (It originally said "who's" with one o), but with that cute owl it HAD to be done!

 

The rest of the layers were various bits of card stock and pattered paper, die cut with an array of circles, scalloped circles, stitched circles, and rectangles.

I even included another Little Hoot on the inside of the card along with a fun message (from a Stampin Up! set that is probably long retired)

The best part of this card is the spinning action. You wind up the little cake and then close the card and tuck it in the envelope. When the recipient opens it, the cake spins. Check out the little video below to see the cake in action (it's my first attempt at uploading video, so I hope it works!)

My husband tried to convince me that I should let him have the completed card because he needs to give someone a birthday card soon. Of course, that "someone" is ME! (I told him no! He's still got a month to find his own card.)

Thank you for checking out my card! Please leave me a comment if you stopped by- I'd love to know who's peeking at my creations!

Disney Crafting

My family and I are heading off to Disney World soon and I have done a bit of crafting with adhesive vinyl and my Silhouette Portrait to get ready! Most recently, I embellished our new Magic Bands to better represent the characters we each used instead of our real names on the inside of our bands (If you look closely at the first picture, you can see the names printed on the box in front of each band- in case you can't figure out the characters from the designs!)

Here are the designs on the other side of each band. I especially love how the BB-8 turned out, with the orange from the band showing through the openings in the design. And I have to give credit to my husband for the idea to use the tower on my band. It was genius!

The other items I embellished are books to hold our collections of Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom game cards. These were actually Christmas gifts for my husband and the boys, so I made them a few months ago. The adhesive vinyl worked beautifully! It is super easy to use and looks very professional. 

The gold one is my husband's, the middle one belongs to Kylo Ren (err, my youngest) and the last one is for my oldest and fellow lover of all things green. We can't wait to to get to Disney and put all these things to good use!

A Few Birthday Cards

Last weekend we celebrated an early Easter with my husbands family and while we were at it, we threw in three birthdays for good measure. Here are the cards I made:

 This card went to my father-in-law, and was done with a bokeh technique I learned about here. The background came together pretty quickly and I was happy with the results. I stamped on a Papertrey Ink sentiment (from the Graceful Greetings set) and glued on some faceted gem-like things I picked up at a stamp convention a few years ago. Overall, a very pretty card!

 This card was for my nephew, who is turning 12 next month. It's a pretty simple card- just a navy base with the negative bits from the Papertrey Quatrefoil Coverplate die cut from patterned paper glued in place (I used the rest of the die cut as a template to place the pieces). Then I used versamark and white embossing powder to add the greeting (from Papertrey, stamped multiple times).

The last card was for my niece, who turned 10 earlier this month. The popsicle stamps and greeting are from the Summer Sweetness set from Papertrey. After stamping the popsicle and drips in orange dye ink, I stamped over them with versamark and heat embossed with clear powder to give it that shiny popsicle look. The patterned paper was from a 6x6 paper stack my husband gave me for Christmas. It was a perfect pair for this stamp set!

Thanks for checking out my cards!

Winter Wonderland

The Challenge this week from Art Impressions is "Winter Wonderland". I don't have very much in the way of winter stamps, especially ones that are not Christmas themed. So I decided to transform a non-winter stamp into something more appropriate!

I started with the "Eat Itself Set" from AI. The woman in the image is wearing a birthday hat and holding a cake behind her back. I selectively inked to remove the cake from my stamped image and sketched in a few snowballs! I also trimmed off the hat when I cut her out.

 

I wanted an inside greeting that went with her hidden stash of snowballs, and I think this hits it nicely.

I used a stitched square frame die from My Favorite Things for the window frame. I also used a couple of MFT stitched rectangle dies to cut the patterned paper. They are from several of their Blueprint die sets. The front sentiment is from Lawn Fawn. I created the inside sentiment with an old alphabet set from Impression Obsession that must be retired (called Scribble) and the Headline Alphabet dies from Papertrey Ink.


I've been meaning to get my Spectrum Noir markers all sorted out into storage trays and play with them more, so this card was the perfect reason. I don't have very much experience with alcohol markers, but I do love to color. I was pretty pleased with how well she turned out. Especially her hair, since hair can be hard to color well.

 Thanks for checking out my card!