Birthday Gift and Card

My husband's sister and her husband have birthdays very close to each other in March, and I find both of them a bit difficult to buy for each year.  This year my hubby suggested that we get them the BBC series Sherlock on DVD, which I thought was a great idea.  Now, just giving a DVD is a bit boring, and as a paper crafter you know I just had to dress it up just a 'little'.

I decided to make a cover for the DVD, and include on the inside some microwave popcorn to add a 'movie' experience feel to the gift. I also wanted to design something that was neither masculine or feminine as it would be a joint present for both of them.  Here you can see the front cover on which I have used Gorgeous Grunge (gosh I hope this doesn't retire this year!) stamped in Rich Razzleberry, Island Indigo and Smokey Slate.  Take note of the Just Sayin' stamp on the cover, I cut this by hand and then layered it over Silver Glimmer Paper, adding some Silver Glimmer Paper punched with the Chevron Punch to the card front.

I used the Tag Topper Punch to make a clasp to hold the cover in place, adding a small magnet to both this and the DVD pocket.  The Razzleberry Candy Dot finishes off the clasp.

I made a cute little banner with the Banner Punch and the stamp set "ABC - 123 Sketch Alphabet & Numbers".  This is a great set that I overlooked for some time but it fits perfectly in not only the banner punch but a number of our other punches as well.   After adhering the banners to the front of the card I put a small rhinestone between each to give some bling.  I also added a cute little paper clip from the Essentials Hardware Clips.  The photo doesn't pick up the sparkle, but in person it really was quite blingy.

This is the inside of the 'card', you can see I made a couple of pockets on the back of the cover to hold the two mini popcorn packets, adding Chevrons in Glimmer Paper to these to tie in the theme from the front.  I just loved the expression on Benedict's face and decided to add a speech bubble with their age!  The panel is for writing the message.

I took some measurements and plan to write up a short tutorial for this, it is a bit bigger because the DVD set is of all three seasons, but the idea would work for normal sized DVDs or even a clear mount stamp set, you could add an ink pad and some embellishments to the pockets instead of popcorn.

The good news is they both loved the gift!

Happy Stamping

60th Birthday

I was asked recently to make a 60th birthday card, and of course this is where Memorable Moments stamp set comes into its own, as you can add whatever numbers you like.  I chose Apothecary Art because of the beautiful soft flowers that look so great when coloured.  Embossed in gold, layered with brushed gold cardstock, and embellished with fabric roses it worked perfectly for the occasion.

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18th Birthday Card

Back in September our beautiful daughter turned 18, a big milestone.  It is hard to believe that the baby I held in my arms is now an adult!  When sitting down to make her birthday card I wanted it to be very special so it took a good deal of planning.  

I started with knowing I wanted to use the retired Fifth Avenue Floral rose as it is her favourite ever stamp.  I had bought some black and white wrapping paper for her gifts so thought I would carry that theme to the card. Then to make it extra special I did a tri-fold card.  Here is a picture of the card closed. 

And another of it open.  I have to say that this is the most embellished card I have ever made, and I couldn't consult with my usual blingologist as the card was for her!  It took a while to get the balance of flowers, butterflies and ribbons just right, but I am really happy with the end result.  I am also happy to say that the birthday girl was very happy with it too! 

Happy Stamping

Popping 18th

My daughter had a birthday celebration this weekend and of course looked to me to create a card for the birthday girl.  We had a discussion about a gift and she decided a gift certificate from one of the local cinemas was a good option.

 I had remembered seeing a card much like this one on the internet somewhere so decided to create one of my own.  To make this I cut a rectangle 9.5cm x 12cm.  Along the bottom I made a mark 1cm from each side and cut from there to the top corner.

I ran a piece of whisper white cardstock through the Fancy Fan embossing folder then used the 7/8" scallop circle punch to make each piece of 'popcorn'.  A little sponging with Daffodil Delight completed the look.  I adhered 7 of these to the top of the 'carton'.

The card is a pocket that holds a gift card (here my Costco card used for measurement purposes lol), I adhered 6 more pop corn pieces on top of this.  I left the bottom half of each piece unstuck so that it would overlap the main card.  I adhered a piece of Whisper White to the back for my daughter to write on, this also hides the tails of the ribbon wrapped around the middle. I used Memorable Moments for the 18, and adhered this to a white embossed image from Sketched Birthday.

Happy Stamping

Stampin' Royalty

Just a quick post this morning because I don't want to miss the deadline for the Stampin' Royalty Challenge this week!

I made this card yesterday but didn't get chance to photograph it because of all the mess I had made while creating it.  I just love this colour combination, and chose a few stamp sets and tools to create this card.  It is the first card I have made using the beautiful new Paper Doily Sizzlits die, for this card I actually trimmed down the doily shape.  That is one of the things I love about this die, you can use it at full size where it just fits on the width of an A5 card or you can trim it off at various points to make a variety of doily shapes.  For this one I just trimmed off the outer layer so it didn't overpower the rest of the layout. I have layered the base image from Everything Eleanor and layered it three times, I got the idea for this from Teneale, and have kept to the basic sketch of her card, mostly so that the main image covers where the layers meet.  

Happy Stamping

Something Old and Something New

I am entering the Sunny Challenges & Creations challenge today, they have a combination of a sketch and a birthday theme.  I am behind on sending out birthday cards at the moment so I decided this was a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone!

Speaking of birds, I just love the little bird in Betsy's Blossoms.  This was one of the sets we could buy in pre-order and I just LOVE it!  The big bursting blossom is also part of the set, as are the stamped images on the background paper.  I made 19 of these cards, using a variety of the retiring in-colours, matching the main flower image and border on the framelit to the background card stock.  Now I just have to pop them in the post and hope the recipients like them!

Happy Stamping

Throw It Down and Mash It Up!

Sounds like something you might hear on fight night, but not so violent as all that, it is just a double challenge from The Colour Throwdown and The Friday Mashup!

I am headed out today with the family to celebrate the birthday of a lovely little girl who is turning 1.  First birthdays are always fun, especially as the person with the birthday often wants to play with the boxes more than the gifts inside them!  I loved the idea of the mash up challenge this week, which is to use a flag or banner and/or create an envelope to match the card.  I had so many ideas for this, but not all fit well with a little person's birthday.  So I went in search of a fun and bright colour combo and the one at Colour Throwdown was perfect.

I wanted to keep the card fairly simple and used my Memorable Moments stamp set, we received this set as part of our make n takes at Convention in May this year and I just love it, it will be so useful for birthdays and anniversaries.  I haven't used the Cupcake Builder Punch in a while so dusted that off for the little cupcake, cutting the base out of DSP and the top out of cardstock which I then ran through the Elegant Lines embossing folder to get the swirly detail on the icing.  To decorate the envelope I used the matching cupcake base stamp and added some sprinkles to the icing with my retired Silver Encore ink.

Now all I need to do is get changed and head off to the party!

Happy Stamping

16th Birthday Card & Gift

This weekend my lovely daughter had two birthdays celebrations to go to and I offered to make her a couple of cards to take. The first one I will show is the 16th card and matching gift box holding a very special hand made gift.

The first thing I made was the gift box.  I tried a couple of options, but the Box #2 die worked best with the gift (sorry no pic of that) but I will tell you about it.  I wanted to use the Framelits die for the cut out on the front of the box as I knew I could then use the larger frames on the birthday card.  I knew the birthday girl likes purple (I think a lot of 16yo girls do!), and so chose Elegant Eggplant, a colour I used to love but haven't used in ages.  I decided it would go very well with Pool Party, to give it a lift.  I chose Pool Party Seam Binding ribbon to tie up the box and hold the lid shut.  The sentiment is from Memorable Moments, stamped and than hand cut.

With the colour pallette for the project sorted out, and knowing I was going to use the Framelits all I had to do was come up with the card - sounds easy right?  Well it mostly was, I started with the Very Vanilla layer, stamping the flourish from Creative Elements in Elegant Eggplant, and then colouring in the leaves in Pool Party with my Stampin' Write Marker.  The Elegant Lines Embossing Folder seemed to go quite well with this so I embossed the Pool Party layer to give some extra texture.  I still wasn't quite happy, so used the oval from the Designer Frames lightly sponged with Elegant Eggplant to give a subtle highlight to the frame.  I added the Happy Birthday sentiment from Perfect Punches punched out with the Extra-Large Oval punch and sponged around the edges with Pool Party.  I finished off with a little bit of bling on the sentiment, Seam Binding to tie it in with the gift box,  and "16" cut out with my Junior Type alphabet die.

 Here are the two together.  Now what is in the box?  My daughter had to design a project for her textiles class this semester, the criteria was that it had to be affordable and easily manufactured.  She did a bit of research and came up with a concept, the first I knew about it was "Mum can I borrow your Big Shot?"!  She had decided to decorate a Bobby Pin with some material cut out with the Perfect Pennants Die, using two different colours of material.  Her project was chosen as one of two in the class!!! I found out while I was at Convention and actually sold one of her creations to one of the demo's there!  So she had decided to make two of these for the birthday girl, one in purple and a dark brown, and the other a purple and cream one.  They look great and are her first creations as McCrazzy Designs!

Happy Stamping