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 Spectrum – Vicky Papaioannou Inspired

This card I made for my cowgirl friend for her birthday and I wanted to do something really clean, simple and pretty for her. I’ve been so flat out recently because I’ve been sick and with work and trying to catch up, etc, etc, etc. I just haven’t had much time for anything so I didn’t want to waste too much time being creative. Or I should say, I would have liked to have ‘wasted’ a lot of time being creative but I didn’t have the luxury.

Vicky Papaioannou is incredibly creative and inspirational and a card she created I have actually wanted to try to recreate and so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity as I can make a quick card, under guidance, for my girlfriend and so save time and still make something pretty and I also get to try a little project. Feel free to check out Vicky’s blog as I’ve put a link at the end of this post.

I started with a plain white card and then I cut a rectangle from pink pattern paper using the second biggest Lawn Fawn Large Stitched Rectangles Die so that there would be plenty of white space. The pink pattern paper is from the Lawn Fawn Hello Sunshine paper pad, my go to for birthday cards.

I then stamped the unicorn and one large and one small cloud from the Paper Smooches Spectrum stamp set and fussy cut them out.

I traced over the lines with the Memento tuxedo black pen to darken the lines and really make them pop. I stamped the ‘you’re awesome’ sentiment on the front. I had stupidly adhered the pattern paper with foam squares already so the ‘u’r’ & ‘eso’ didn’t stamp so I had flip the card and try and press that part in without making a mess. Unfortunately I made a bit of smudge in the middle of the pink pattern paper so I positioned the unicorn’s nose over the smudge to hide it. Once I was happy with the position of the clouds and the unicorn I took them back off and coloured them in.

I love these Derwent Studio pencils. My father brought them for me for my birthday. The photo shows all the colours I used on the unicorn. I used the Gunmental grey to make the clouds look a little puffier. I drew a tiny heart onto a scrap piece of white card stock and coloured it in using Geranium Lake.

I am, similar to Vicky, addicted to the Wink of Stella Glitter Pens. I glittered up the heart and the entirety of the unicorn and then I used some stickles to add a bit of extra glitter to the tail and horn and a dabbed a few spots on the haunch. I was really happy with how quickly it came together and how cute and simple it looks. I would love to remake this card and do a few variation cards.

Link to Vicky Papaioannou’s Clips-n-Cuts website; the inspiration for this card:
http://www.clips-n-cuts.com/2014/03/awesome/