Blue Birthday Cupcake and a Tip for You, Too

I made this card is for today's featured stamper challenge on SCS. Charlene/LilLuvsStampin is today's stamper. You can find her SCS gallery here.

You can see the card I used for the challenge here. It really doesn't look much like the card I ended up making, but I guess that's the idea of the challenge, isn't it?

As soon as I saw Charlene's cute penguin card, I thought that the design would work really well with the smaller cupcake image from Happy Birthday Cupcake from Kitchen Sink Stamps. I think it was the handwritten sentiment that circled the penguin image on Charlene's card that made me think about the cupcake image.

I ended up changing the orientation of the card and changing the shade of blue I used here. I also omitted one of the layers--the white embossed panel--because I couldn't cut a scalloped square that looked right with my scallop edged scissors. I think the white layer might have added a nice pop to the image . . .

The cupcake image is actually attached to the inside of the card using dimensionals. I used my new set of Nestabilities circles along with my Cuttlebug to cut through the scalloped circle and the cardfront to make the opening. My cut isn't as centered as I would have liked--I think I need a little more practice with these to get the hang of them. I colored the cupcake image with Copic markers and added some glitter to the flame.

I stamped the "make a wish" sentiment from the Happy Birthday Cupcake set on a scrap of ribbon and attached it to a Ruby Red panel along the bottom of the cardfront. The sentiment is a perfect fit for 1/4" grosgrain ribbon! Fun and easy to do. I borrowed this idea from fellow Kitchen Sink Crew member Erika. She did this on a card she shared on her blog at the start of the weekend. You can find her card here.

Here's a tip for figuring out how to place the images so they'll fit and be spaced correctly. I set the ribbon out on a piece of scrap paper, then stamped the images on the scrap paper, just above the ribbon, to check for placement and fit. By using the scrap paper, I can try out placement a few times before putting the ink on the ribbon. When I'm ready to stamp, I just line up the ribbon (or piece of paper) right under the line that I want to use for a guide. Since I know that probably didn't make much sense the way I tried to describe it, I took a photo of my work space ( a small and not messy part of it!) to show you what I mean.

Materials Used:
Happy Birthday Cupcake and Backgrounds & Borders sets (Kitchen Sink Stamps); Blue Bayou Classic ink, Blue Bayou, Ruby Red, and Whisper White cardstock, white gel pen, mat pack and paper piercing tool, corner rounder, white grosgrain ribbon (Stampin' Up!); Graphite Black ink (Brilliance); circle dies (Nestabilities); giga scalloped circle punch (Marvy Uchida); Copic markers; Platinum Stickles (Ranger)