Birthday Wishes

I've needed 3 more birthday cards for upcoming birthdays - one for my Mom & two masculine birthdays.  This first, is for my Mom.  Since Mom is a papercrafter too, I always feel I need to make hers extra special.  I had a hard time figuring out what that would be, until I was reminded of this Hunkydory paper I got in a Magazine that was given to me for Christmas.  It's beautiful, and my Mother LOVES roses.  Perfect! 

I immediately realized I wanted to make a larger card than usual to accommodate the frame/focal that I wanted to use.  I ended up making the card 8" square. 

Materials:

• Hunkydory: All Things Bright and Beautiful kit
• Spellbinder's dies: Grand Scalloped Squares, Decorative Triangle from Botanical Swirls & Accents, Fleur De Lis Squares
• Stamps: Celebrations Borders One and Bracket Borders One (JustRite), Wreath Builder (Gina K Designs)
• Clear Acetate from packaging
• Poster Board: gold metallic 
• Card Stock: Plain white
• Inks: Spun Sugar (Distress Ink), Pearl Orchid (Brilliant Inks)
• Foam Tape

Background and card prep: I started with one piece of card stock that was 8" x 8", and a second that was 8" x 8 1/2".  The extra half inch was to create a tab for gluing the two pieces together.  I used that piece for the card front and wrapped the tab behind to secure it to the 2nd piece.  Before I did that, though, I die cut the center portion out of the card front.  I didn't have a lot of dies that were large enough, so I used my Grand Scalloped Square dies (Spellbinders) to cut through both the card & the backing paper (without gluing them together first!).  Then I trimmed the inner pointed parts from the inside of the scallops so they would not be visible inside the frame.  I cut a piece of clear acetate a bit larger than the hole and glued it in place - sandwiching the acetate between the background paper and the card base.

Focal and Greeting: I put a double layer of dimensional tape on the frame & added it so that it framed the hole created in the last step.  I arranged the focal on point like a diamond.  To adhere, I cut another strip piece of dimensional tape to put behind the focal - arranging things so this would be covered by a sentiment strip (see inside of card).  That helped keep the focal in place - along with a touch of glue at each corner.  I added the sentiment tag - with a double layer of foam tape on the outside edge of it & glue on the inner corner to keep it in place.

Inside:

I discovered my foam tape was visible from the inside, so I used borders from the Hunkydory kit & strips of gold poster board to create a frame that hid it.  I also added a couple more decorative pieces from the kit to fancy it up a bit.    

On the other inside panel, I covered most of the inside with a coordinating striped paper from the kit.  Then I added a couple of gold die cut "Botanical Swirls and Accents" triangle pieces (cut from the poster board) in opposing corners.  My message/focal here started as a piece of white card stock that was die cut with a Fleur De Lis Square die & inked before being stamped using sentiments from the two sets mentioned in the materials list.  In order to get the color I wanted to coordinate well with the papers, I used both inks listed - one on top of the other - for shading & stamping.  

Here's a closeup of the two inside panels:

 

Back:

The back was decorated with a border strip of leftover paper (to hide where the card base pieces joined) and stamped with my "priceless" stamp (from my stash - not sure who made it.)

Next up - Two Masculine Birthday Cards:

Materials:

• Printed papers & cutouts from a HOTP cardmaking kit.
• Black marker (Sharpie)
• Stamps: Wreath Builder (Gina K Designs), Grand Sentiments (JustRite)
• Premade Focal: Botanical Swirls Labels (JustRite) and matching Botanical Swirls & Accents dies (Spellbinders), Tiny Words & Images (HOTP), alcohol inks
• Scraps of gray, brown, and black cardstock 
• Ink for edges of papers/cutouts

First Masculine Card:

Here you can see that I cut strips of the starred paper to form borders for the gray paper - then added a bunch of cut-out elements from the kit.

On the inside I stamped a sentiment from the Gina K set & added inked papers & cut out.

2nd Masculine Card:

For this background, I combined the star paper with some of the grey and a printed border strip (once again inking the edges). I added the pre-made focal sentiment, but decided it needed the additional bits of brown card stock for the border & "ribbon" at the top.  I outlined these with a black pen so they would stand out better.

The inside was more of the same at the bottom, but I created a tag from scraps & added it to a strip of black card stock at the top of this page.