Very Vintage Birthday

Some of my favorite new products in the 2018-2019 annual catalog bring back my most loved paper crafting style of all time: Vintage! I was so happy when I opened the catalog and saw that distressed wood, florals, and tea room prints were back with an updated style!

One of my favorite new sets in the catalog is the hostess set called Very Vintage. This set features a gorgeous rose motif and several coordinating images that are just lovely. 

For today's project I used the Very Vintage hostess set combined with one of my favorite paper packs EVER, the Wood Textures Designer Series Paper pack.

I created the background for this card by sponging the doily stamp from Very Vintage with Melon Mambo and Peekaboo Peach ink and stamping on white woodgrain paper from the Wood Textures DSP pack. For the oval sentiment, I stamped the rose image twice in Melon Mambo without reinking to create a shadow effect.  I pulled out my now-retired Butterfly Basics set to add some Mint Macaron accent leaves, the birthday sentiment, and the black line image to help balance the design. I layered the sentiment oval over a die cut Mint Macaron label, and added a scrap of cotton trim and gold sequin trim for texture.

My favorite part of this card is the gold embossed vellum bees I added for texture. They catch the light so well and really complete the vintage look of this design. Remember to use your embossing buddy to reduce static when embossing on vellum.

I hope this card give you some inspiration, and I hope that summer is bringing joy and warmth to your life!

Sheltering Tree Bookmark Card

Sometimes a card is perfect all on its own, and sometimes a little something extra is needed for an extra special person! I found this fun inspiration from Debbie Henderson on YouTube, and I just had to give it a try! 

This card opens to reveal both a sentiment and a perforated bookmark that the recipient can tear off and use.

I have had a perforated strip die from Papertrey Ink in my stash for  a good long while but just couldn't seem to riddle out a way to use it on this card! The die is more than 6" long, and this card requires a full 11" width of cardstock, so I couldn't seem to figure out how to run it through my narrow Big Shot. Of course, I finally figured out that I could create all my score lines and fold the card over on itself to run it through my machine facing the right direction without it being too wide. The die did leave some indentations on the card front, but after applying all the layers, this really wasn't visible at all.

I created these lovely watercolor-style trees with Stampin Up's Sheltering Tree stamp set, and the sun and clouds from the now retired Sunshine and Rainbows stamp set from the 2018 Occasions Catalog. The sentiment on the belly band comes from the Tin of Tags Christmas set, but any medium to large sentiment would work!

I layered three shades of green: Garden Green, Old Olive, and Lemon Lime Twist, on a Garden Green Card base with a tiny border of Lemon Lime Twist to create a summery feel. 

I hope this card brings joy and sunshine to the life of someone special!

More Birthday Fun!

It's always sad when my favorite sets retire from the Stampin' Up catalog, and this year two of the retiring sets were among my very favorite for creating birthday cards for kids. I am the proud auntie of several really adorable nephews and nieces, and I love making fun cards for their birthdays since they live far away. 

The first card was inspired by Sandi MacIver on Pinterest. This design was so sweet I decided to add matching tags and create several variations using these adorable birthday animals! The cards feature fun honeycomb balloons that the recipients can open after the cards are mailed.

The second design is among my most ambitious scene cards in a long time. Even though the cover of this card doesn't contain a lot of elements, the sponging, stamping, and fussy cutting took me a good long time. The interior pop and twist mechanism was much less time consuming, but creates a truly magical surprise when the card is opened!

I absolutely adore making fun cards for kids, so these projects made me smile for a long time! I hope you are having a magical day!

Catching Up with Colorful Birthdays!

Summer is a fantastic time to craft up some colorful birthday fun for all the colorful, fun people in my life! When I feel low on inspiration, Pinterest can usually offer up some fun designs and ideas for sets I already own, and whether I use just the colors in the design ideas I find, or just the layout - or both - I'm always grateful for the inspiration!

This design was originally posted by Rochelle Blok. I loved the color combo and imagery so much I created a second version using these cute noise makers! Nothing makes me happier than bright blues, greens, and pinks!

After hearing mixed reviews on the user-friendliness of this roller coaster die, I was pretty nervous to try it out. After making this card, I will freely admit that this one IS hard to use. In fact I'm pretty convinced that this is due to a design flaw in the die itself. When I moved the score line created by the die up a 1/4 of an inch, all my problems disappeared, and I was finally able to get this cute pop-up to work. This die is not for the faint of heart, but the effect really is adorable! I used the color inspiration I found in Rochelle's design on this project as well.

For the third card, I used the same color inspiration featuring foil paper and a fun birthday balloon. I ended up making six of this design in various coordinating color schemes. Since I have two teenage daughters with lots of friends who have lots of birthdays, having a simple birthday card on hand can be a life saver!

The last card I'll share today was inspired by a layout I found by Amy O'Neill. I replaced the bicycle Amy used as the focal point on her card and copic colored this adorable llama instead. This cute patterned paper by Paper Studio creates a fun fiesta card!

I hope you have had a warm and colorful summer!