Birthday Card Making – Newtons Nook Birthday Card Idea – Cute Cat on Fence

This is a birthday card I made for my younger brother – his birthday was actually in May so it was a bit belated… When I was making the birthday cards for my friends, you can check out those by clicking here and here, I really wanted to do a ginger kitty. So I started by stamping out the cute little cat with the beret and scarf from the Newton’s Nook Newton Dreams of Paris stamp set and coloured him in orange using my Derwent Studio Pencils. I remembered my colour theory and coloured in his little hat and scarf in complementary blue. Oh my gosh he looks so adorable!

I had some scrap strips of yellow pattern paper left from the ray burst sheet I used on the ‘bonjour’ birthday card. I don’t know how I came up with the idea but I think it’s amazingly cute how he looks sitting on top of the yellow square. I tried to make a bit of a fence by cutting more pieces of the yellow paper and I cut them in different sizes to add a bit more interest to the design. I chose to use a blue striped background paper from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine 6×6 petite paper pack and adhered it onto a blue card stock from a Simon Says Stamp Card Kit.

I adhered the kitty and the fence pieces using foam squares. Finally I stamped the sentiment ‘happy birthday’ from a Stampendous sentiment stamp set in clear embossing ink and then I used Wow Embossing Powder and heat set it using the Heat It Craft Tool. The heat setting did warp the card but I’ll set it under a heavy book for a while to straighten it out before I give it to my younger brother.

I’m really pleased with the simplicity and the cuteness of the card. I think the simplicity adds an extra element of adorable.

Birthday Card Making – Newtons Nook Birthday Card Idea – Bonjour Balloon Cat

This was another quick birthday card I put together for a friend’s birthday. I was really happy with the way this card turned out considering my time constraints. I knew I wanted to use the cute kitty in the hot air balloon basket from the Newton’s Nook Newton Dreams of Paris stamp set, so I started by stamping that first. I fussy cut out the balloon and then cut out the cat and the basket. I stamped the cat again and cut only the cat out of this second stamp. This was so I could add a little dimension but also because of the way his tail curls around, I didn’t want any white space in the gap between his tail and the basket.

I coloured in the basket, the balloon and then the cat. I chose a yellow ray burst pattern paper from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine 6×6 petite paper pack. I’m actually quite amazed by how many cards I’ve made with this paper pack. It doesn’t sound like much but 36 pages really does go a long way, and I still have lots of scraps that I can use!

I adhered the ray burst directly onto the yellow card stock card base and then trimmed the edges (that’s why the left-hand side doesn’t look so straight haha). After that, I adhered the balloon, the basket and then the cat on top of the basket. I stamped the sentiment ‘bonjour’, also from the Newton Dreams of Paris stamp set, directly onto the pattern paper to the right of the hot air balloon.

To finish the card, I simply hand drew the lines of the balloon rope from the balloon to the basket and the rope line blowing away ending in a curl. I used my Memento tuxedo black ink pen. I really liked the hand drawn touch and used the original stamp as a guide. The rope line curling away I think helps add movement to the card as though the cat is floating along in the basket by the breeze. I think my friend should really like this card because of the cuteness factor so I can’t wait to hand it to her.

 

If you’re interested in seeing the other cards I’ve made using the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine papers, you can check them out by clicking the links below:

Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp with Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine Paper Birthday Card Idea

Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine & Paper Smooches Spectrum Card Idea

Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine & Paper Smooches Spectrum Card Idea

Paper Smooches Spectrum & Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine Idea

Paper Smooches 9 Lives & Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine Idea

Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp Set Birthday Card Idea – Cute Happy Cat Stamp

Paper Smooches Nine Lives Card Idea – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

Paper Smooches Nine Lives Card Idea – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Spectrum – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp

 

And if you’re interested in seeing the other cards I’ve made using the Newton’s Nook Newton Dreams of Paris stamp set, you can also check them out by clicking the links below:

Simon Says Stamp Card Kit March 2015 & Newtons Nook – Birthday Card Idea

Newtons Nook Birthday Card Idea – Seedy Moustache

 

Enjoy!

Birthday Card Making – Newtons Nook Birthday Card Idea – Seedy Moustache

This was a quick little card I put together as a belated birthday card. I used the Newtons Nook Dreams of Paris stamp set. I had my partner help me with this one as the card is for a mutual friend. So he decided to use the cat with the striped shirt. I stamped the cute cat stamp and then fussy cut him out. I didn’t wait for the ink to dry so I had a bit of smudging here and there. I should really learn to be more patient with my crafts. Then I coloured in the cat using my Derwent Studio Pencils. I had a scrap piece of grey pattern paper from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine paper pack and I adhered that directly to the black card base as a strip. I then adhered the cute kitty with foam tape. I stamped the little moustache separately and fussy cut it out. I went around the edges of the moustache with the memento tuxedo black ink pen and then adhered it with a glue pen. I stamped the sentiment ‘le meow’ onto a scrap piece of yellow pattern paper also from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine paper pack and cut it into a ribbon. As an afterthought I decided to add some moustaches to the ribbon. After I stamped the moustaches to the ribbon, I wasn’t immediately sold on it, but my partner really liked the effect so that’s how it is going to stay.

It’s really awesome having the moustache stamps as the friend we are gifting the card to is often teased about the day he unintentionally had a moustache that made him look like a really seedy pervert. A little inside joke into a card I think is a nice touch.

Birthday Card Making – Simon Says Stamp Card Kit March 2015 & Newtons Nook – Birthday Card Idea

 

This card I made for a workmate’s sister’s birthday. I used the Simon Says Stamp Card Kit from March 2015 with the Newtons Nook Newton Dreams of Paris stamp set. The cardstock is the grey from the Simon Says Stamp Card Kit which I cut and folded to the standard card size.

I used two strips of the shiny gold paper left over from my previous cards I made, you can check the birthday card I made for mother out by clicking here.

I used another scrap piece of pattern paper and placed in in the middle of the two gold strips, making the gold strips border the chevron strip. I stamped the sentiment ‘le meow’ on to a small rectangle cut from the same grey cardstock as the card base. I accented it with a cluster of three gold rhinestones.

Lastly, I stamped little Newton who looks absolutely adorable wearing his little scarf and beret. I coloured Newton in using my Derwent Studio Pencils. My favourite gunmetal grey for his kitty cat body and then yellow for his beret and scarf. I accented his scarf bow with a rhinestone. I went over the hat and scarf using a Wink of Stella Clear Glitter Pen but it’s really hard to catch the glint of the glitter in a photograph.

I really liked how this card turned out. It was a little surprising as when I started making the card, I hadn’t intended on using the Newton’s Nook stamp set, but I’m glad I decided to go that way.

Thinking Of You Cards – Cards for Friends – Simon Says Stamp Card Kit March 2015 – Authentique Classic Beauty Card Idea

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I work night shift and my shifts are twelve hours sometimes thirteen (like tonight) and because of not just the amount of time I work, but because it’s night shift so I tend to be sleeping when everyone else is awake doing normal things, I quite often end up neglecting my social life and thus my friends and family.

So yesterday morning, before going to bed, I spent about 15 minutes as my relax time to put together a nice little card for my dear friend Yvette, who I wouldn’t be where I am today without her.

Yvette is quite often on my mind, but being on opposite schedules means I can’t always tell her and we rarely find time to catch up with our conflicting schedules. I can’t just call or text her at 2AM in the morning when I’m wide awake having lunch at work, thinking ‘I wonder how Yvette is going’, because she’ll be in bed sleeping – and there’s nothing worse than having one’s sleep interrupted…

The card is constructed simply using the Authentique Classic Beauty pattern papers and journaling cards. I chose out the pretty picture of the lady holding the rose from the collection. I chose it for a few reasons: the image is simple and beautiful, the lady looks both sad and happy, and she seems to be looking at the flower wistfully but also fondly with amusement. So I was kinda feeling like my friend is the rose and I am the woman.

I love Yvette, I’m happy she’s my friend but at the same time I’m sad because we don’t spend much time together and I neglect her terribly.

I really tried to capture in the photo the shiny glitter I added on the rose using the Wink of Stella Clear Glitter Pen. And I added a triplet of gold rhinestones as a little design flair to finish the card off.

Do you have a friend or family member you’ve been neglecting? Is there someone you’ve been thinking of recently and would like to reconnect with? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you.

Birthday Card Making – Simon Says Stamp Card Kit March 2015 – Authentique Classic Beauty – Birthday Card Idea – Mum’s Belated Birthday

  

This card I made for my mother’s birthday (belated) using the Simon Says Stamp Card Kit March 2015 release containing the Authentique Classic Beauty paper and coordinating journaling cards. I absolutely loved the look of this card kit and Authentique’s papers as they are all so beautiful and it really is a classy, chic combination of the greys, blacks and then that bright pop of yellow.

I started this card by flipping through the journaling cards and I found this one with the quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘you are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known – and even that is an understatement.’ And I thought that was suitable to describe my mother and would be a positive note for her to receive as a birthday message.

As I had this quote and the journaling card took up the majority of the card face, I didn’t bother with any other sentiment stamps on the face of the card.

One of the papers has a newspaper style text but could also be an old style dictionary as it had words and then descriptions. At first I wanted to make sure I had the tree displayed as my mother has always loved trees and then when I looked closer I saw that there were the words mother and the description of mother and I thought, how perfect!

I had the black striped lines left over from a previous card and I really loved the gold shiny scrapbook card that was also in the card kit and I wanted this card to be shiny and bright and positive. I arranged the pattern papers to my liking and then adhered them down. I adhered the journaling card to some scrap black card stock and cut the black card stock down to size to allow a small black border. I found this helped break apart the quote from the bright, shiny gold of the main background. I adhered that using foam squares.

On the yellow rose flowers on the journaling card I used a wink of stella clear glitter pen to give a bit more shine to that part of the card, bring everything together and give the card that little something extra special. I tried to show the glitter shine on the roses, but the photos never truly capture the sparkle.

I really love how this card turned out and I enjoyed the process of making it. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp with Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine Paper Birthday Card Idea

My partner’s father also has a birthday in March. March seems to be a popular month for birthdays. This is great as it’s forcing me to make some birthday cards! But I was stuck for ideas. I really felt as though I had exhausted my creativity. After a little sook and throwing my papers in the air in an overly dramatic display of exasperation, my partner come over to the table and sat down and started playing with the supplies while giving me a pep talk.

I had just finished cutting out a little cat in a bit of a play pose and was starting to cut out another one while I was racking my brain for ideas.

My partner laughs and I look up at him and he’s says simply, ‘look he’s playing with the birds’. His innocent view on life and the boyish cheekiness is why I fell in love with him. I couldn’t help but laugh and smile. He thought I was laughing ‘at’ him initially, but I was so amazed that he had come up with such a great idea for a card. He was really chuffed that he’d actually come up with a great idea so he gave me a kiss then went back to his video games. Anyway, that’s how this card design came about!

While he was at work the next day, I started to piece together the card. I decided that it’d be great to have a whole lotta sparkle and wanted to go over the white pattern paper with the wink of stella pen. And ooops! I squeezed too hard…

Luckily I had a second piece of the pattern paper with the birds on it so I tried again. The first piece was already adhered so I cut an eighth of an inch off each end of the second piece and adhered it with foam tape to give the card a bit more dimension.

So sparkly!

For the sentiment I white embossed ‘you are’ and ‘loved’ onto a scrap piece of orange pattern paper. The sentiment stamps are from the Simon Says Stamp ‘Thinking of You’ stamp set. The inspiration for placing the ‘loved’ sentiment over the ‘you are’ sentiment comes from Vicky Papaioannou. I adhered the orange pattern paper with foam squares and used a Derwent Studio pencil to give a touch of shading to the playful kitty.

I am really pleased with the simple clean look of this card and my only input was to put glitter all over it. ^-^

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp Set Birthday Card Idea – Cute Happy Cat Stamp

My partner’s younger brother has a birthday in March and I wanted to make him a super cool card.

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll have noticed I use the Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp Set and the Paper Smooches Spectrum Stamp Set with the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine pattern paper quite a bit. This is because I’m on a budget so I can’t buy all the new trendy items every week. I save up and a make a purchase of the items I need (with a couple wants mixed in hopefully) once every couple of months. I prefer to buy online and have the items shipped out. I’ve had the best service from http://www.123stitch.com and they have very reasonable shipping costs from US to Australia.

With all that said, I tend to make alterations to an already tried idea to try and make something new and unique each time while using minimal supplies. I love the adorable happy cat stamp in the Nine Lives Stamp Set and I thought, the more the merrier!

So I stamped (using tuxedo black memento ink) the cat twice on the orange pattern paper and once on a scrap piece of grey pattern paper with the idea of creating three cats. I stamped the mouth area three times on plain white card stock.

Using memento ink markers I shaded the tongue and mouth with black and red and then I fussy cut the three mouths out. I adhered the cut out mouths on top of the two orange cats and the one grey cat. I fussy cut the cats out and shaded them with Derwent Studio pencils. I went over the outline of the cats with a tuxedo black memento ink marker. I accidentally made a mistake on one of the orange cats so in attempt to fix the mistake, or camouflage it, I drew lines to create a striped cat.

I gathered together some scrap strips from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine paper pad.

I arranged them on the card and adhered them slightly askew to give the card a more fun and casual flair. I trimmed the excess with scissors.

When I was arranging the kitty-cats onto the card I found I wanted to have the grey cat slightly higher than the others, but it looked odd to have him sort of floating on the white pattern paper. So I cut a little scrap of blue pattern paper to place behind the kittens so that it looked as though they were sitting on a mound or cushion. Now all that was left was to stamp a sentiment! I chose the ‘you’re awesome’ sentiment, I stamped it onto white card stock and then drew a speech balloon around it. I fussy cut the balloon out and then using the memento ink marker, I traced the edges and drew a border. I adhered the speech balloon to the card using foam squares.

I was very happy with the final result. I wasn’t able to see my partner’s younger brother for his birthday but my partner informed me that the card was a smash-hit success!

Birthday Card Making – Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine & Paper Smooches Spectrum Card Idea

Another March birthday card made for a friend. I wanted to use the Paper Smooches Spectrum unicorn stamp for this one and I knew I wanted to remake the unicorn from a February birthday card I made as I had a lot of fun making that one. I wanted the card to be bright and cheery so I chose the ‘Hello Sunshine’ yellow pattern paper from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine 6 x 6 paper pack.

I made the unicorn in the same way as the February birthday card by stamping the unicorn multiple times on different coloured cardstock and then cutting out a different pattern paper for each section of the unicorn’s mane and tail. When the unicorn was complete I played with the layout and decided the card looked a bit empty with just the unicorn and the yellow background. So I stamped a cloud from the Paper Smooches Spectrum stamp set onto scrap piece of white cardstock. I fussy cut the cloud out and then shaded it with my trusty Gunmetal Grey Derwent Studio pencil.

I used a strip of scrap pattern paper in the same Lawn Fawn paper collection and I used embossing ink to stamp the sentiment ‘wishing you sunshine and rainbows’ from the same Paper Smooches Spectrum stamp set. I used WOW Embossing powder and then heat set it with the Ranger Heat It Craft Tool.

Playing with the layout again, I decided to change the side the yellow pattern paper was on to the other side. I then adhered the pink strip of pattern paper in the middle of the yellow pattern paper (eyeballing it). And I cut a slit behind the unicorn’s front leg to be able to position the unicorn on the cloud. The card still appeared a little empty or didn’t seem to flow well together so I used a white gel pen to create a stitched border pattern around the yellow and pink pattern papers. I also drew a swirly line in the dashed pattern from the cloud to the sentiment to try and tie the card together more and was pleased with the results.

When all that was done, I went absolutely nuts with the wink of stella clear glitter pen. I went all over the unicorn and the yellow background with the glitter pen.

 

Birthday Card Making – Paper Smooches Nine Lives Card Idea – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

I was really enthused after creating the cute happy cat birthday card for a friend, inspired by Vicky Papaioannou. You can check that post here. And I wanted to try something along the same lines but shake things up a bit to create something fresh. There are quite a few of my friends with birthdays in March so I thought it’d be a very practical idea to get a head start on creating some cute cards for these friends.

Keeping with the cute cat theme, I chose a different cat from the Paper Smooches Nine Lives Stamp set. I stamped the cat with tuxedo black memento ink on to a scrap of grey patterned paper from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine collection (my go to paper stack for birthday cards – I think I’m going to be sad when I run out).

With so many cards made using the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine papers, I had quite a few scraps left. So I gathered a few to coordinate together. The rainbow strips were already cut into workable strips so I didn’t have to alter those at all. The larger pink strip of pattern paper I used the Fiskars scalloped border punch on the long edges. And the yellow paper has ‘Hello Sunshine’ with a sun as a striped pattern on the paper so I cut two thin strips between the lines of ‘Hello Sunshine’ from a larger strip of scrap pattern paper.

To the larger pink pattern paper with the scalloped edge, I created an embossed background. The inspiration from Vicky Papaioannou starts to become evident in this step. I wiped down the paper with an anti-static pouch to prep the area for embossing. I used the range of smaller catty item stamps in the Paper Smooches Nine Lives stamp set stamped where I could fit them using Ranger’s embossing ink. I used white embossing powder then heat set the powder. Just like in the previous card, I used stickles on the bottles to create interest.

There was a gap left at the bottom when I was creating the embossed background, mostly because I had smudged a fishbowl and had removed it. I wasn’t fazed as I had planned to place the cute kitty cat at the bottom in that area anyway. I decided to use the ‘you’re purrty’ sentiment stamp and decided where I wanted to place it by using the clear acrylic block with the stamp clinging to it.

I decided to keep the sentiment simple and stamped it using tuxedo black memento ink onto plain white card stock. I trimmed the cardstock down and then adhered it to the card using foam squares. I decided to add a little shading to the cat as well using the Derwent Studio pencil in Gun Metal Grey.

I was really pleased with the final result and I can’t wait to give it to the birthday girl!

Link to Vicky Papaioannou’s Clips-n-Cuts website; the inspiration for this card:

http://www.clips-n-cuts.com/2013/03/how-to-video-and-giveaway/