Birthday Duo

I have a few birthday cards to send out this month, so today's Featured Stamper challenge pushed me to get a head start on making some of the cards I'll need. This week's featured stamper, Kelly/atomicbutterfly, (see her gallery here) uses lots of paper piercing and layering details in her cards, so I chose to work with cards that featured some of those details.

This card uses the Cuttlebug Happy Birthday A2 embossing folder on patterned paper. Like the card I was using for inspiration, I sanded some of the raised text for additional detail. I love this effect--I'll have to use it more. I have such a hard time incorporating patterned paper into my designs and I'm really trying to do more of this. The original card had a different image, but since it was a line image, replacing it with an image from Living Large kept the same feel. I colored the girl and cake image with SU!'s Watercolor Wonder Crayons and added some sparkly gold Stickles to the candles.


I chose to do a version of this card because I love the way Kelly uses the All in a Row stamp set in a lot of her creations. I have it, but have trouble using it. In my card, I stamped the stitch line from All in a Row along the bottom of the card in white craft ink. I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to get the image straight. That made me realize just how crooked I mounted the image (LOL!). Anyway, I replaced the Petals and Paisley designer paper that Kelly used with Petal Patch paper from the Summer Mini catalog and replaced the Easter image with the birthday cake from Eat Cake. My colors were inspired both by the patterned paper and Kelly's original color choices. I kept the layout and the use of a strip of kraft paper with stitching (hers--real sewing, mine--faux). I'm excited to give these cards to my friends celebrating birthdays later this month!

One final thing--if you're interested in receiving notification when I post updates to my blog, I have added a link to the Feedblitz service. Feedblitz will send you an e-mail letting you know there's new content. To sign up, scroll down and look on the right-hand side my of blog. The link to sign up should be there somewhere . . . And thanks to those who requested this--I'm completely surprised and flattered that anyone would want to be a subscriber!!

Materials Used (You Take the Cake card):
From Stampin' Up!: Living Large stamp set; Basic Black Classic ink; Bashful Blue, Regal Rose, and Whisper White cardstock; Wonderful Watercolor Crayons; aquapainter; rose grosgrain; stampin' dimensionals; sanding block
Other: Cuttlebug Happy Birthday A2 embossing folder; DCWV patterned paper; gold Stickles (Ranger); pink brads (Making Memories)

Materials Used (Joyful Birthday card):
From Stampin' Up!: Eat Cake, All in a Row, and Small Sayings stamp sets; Chocolate Chip Classic ink; White Craft ink; Chocolate Chip, Mellow Moss, Bashful Blue, Certainly Celery, and Barely Banana markers; Bashful Blue, Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery, Kraft, and Whisper White cardstock; Petal Patch designer paper; spring moss grosgrain; mat pack and paper piercing tool; white gel pen; stampin' dimensionals; Stamp-a-ma-jig
Other: gold Stickles (Ranger)