Happy Birthday Card as Seen on Papercrafts

I was browsing through the blogs when I stumbled upon this adorable card using my favorite Stampin' Up stamp, Swallowtail, on the Papercrafts and Scrapbooking blog here.  So while I watched the Seattle/49ers game yesterday, I made my own version.  I stamped the butterfly in Versafine ink and heat embossed it with some clear embossing powder.  I then colored in one with my Spectrum Noir markers and left the other black and white for the base.  I then cut the black and white one down to fit a standard A2 card with a black mat and the colored version smaller.  I then matted both of them on plain black card stock and layered them together.  I stamped the sentiment from my Hero Arts All Occasions set in the Versafine on some vellum and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder to match.  I ran the sentiment through my Xyron and adhered it across the bottom of the panel.  Then all I had to was adhere the panel to my card base and I was done.

Looking back on it now, I kind of wish that I had made the colored panel a touch smaller.  Well, maybe next time...

Swallowtail Thank You Card

The hubster had to work on Saturday because they had a busy day of caterings.  He then went on to explain that it was even busier than expected because one of the employees was in a car accident while making a delivery.  He asked me to make a thank you card for a woman who witnessed the accident and stayed to get the employee some help.  I knew just the card I wanted to try.  I saw it on Julie Davidson's blog recently and was excited to try it out.  It's a cute card, but let me tell you, it took some work.  The outside was pretty easy.  Just stamp the Stampin' Up Swallowtail stamp with some Momento Espresso Truffle ink.  Then, I just colored my little heart out with some colored pencils.  I added the sentiment in the same ink using a stamp from Inkadinkado's Thank You Words set.  Then I mounted that on some pink paper from Authentique's Lively collection in the 6x6 pad. 

 

Then I had to set that aside to work on the card base and the inside.  I drew out the card base in Silhouette and added a quarter inch extra to the long side to give me room to sandwich the two sides.  I added a perforated line at the standard 4 1/4 inch to fold the extra 1/4 inch part easily.  Then I duplicated it and horizontally flipped it so I would have two mirrored sides to sandwich together so it looked like this:

 

I cut that out of card stock and used my bone folder to fold over the small flaps so that they would be inside the card.  I then cut seven large and small butterflies with three of each size flipped horizontally so they could be sandwiched together. The larger cuts worked with the large butterfly in the Teresa Collins Spring Fling stamp set. Once they were stamped, I sandwiched the mirrored stamps with a clear acetate strip between them so they would "float" and set them aside to dry.  I skipped the stamping on the smaller butterflies and made just two sandwiches of those with the acetate.  I did a little more coloring on the larger butterflies.  Then, using really sticky tape, I taped the acetate holding the butterfly sandwiches to the flap of one card and then stuck the two halves of the card together.  I punched two pink border strips from the same pink paper and glued those to either side of the flaps to hide them.  I used the extra butterflies on the card base. The card is super cute, but a lot of work!    

Happy Birthday Card Inspired by the Paper Players Challenge

I was really inspired by Nance Leedy's card from the Paper Players Challenge #147.  I loved how she stamped the large sunflower over the card and through I would give it a try with the Swallowtail stamp from Stampin' Up.  I simply adore that stamp.  I used four colors of card stock from DCWV's Pastel stack:  white, yellow, blue and green.  Then I stamped the image using Momento's Toffee Crunch ink and colored it in with some colored pencils.  I resized a card from the 3x4 Life Cards by Lori Whitlock in the Silhouette store (Design ID #25178) to make it super tiny and stamped the sentiment from a set of stamps I bought from Boxer before they closed.  I then tied the tag using some Hemptique twine onto some sheer yellow ribbon. 

 

Isn't it funny how sometimes you finish a card and you know exactly what you would do differently?  The minute I saw this card sitting on the shelf across the craft room, I thought I should have swapped the blue and yellow.  They would be more impact if they were in the opposition positions. 

Another Butterfly Card

I loved the butterfly card using the Stampin' Up Swallowtail stamp on Stampin' Lab's blog.  It's just gorgeous and I thought I could quickly create my own version, but I'm still so exhausted that my brain just wasn't helping me tonight.  I didn't have the same stamp for the border, but I found a nice swirly one in my stash that I thought would work.  I embossed both and then colored in the butterfly.  I didn't have the right baker's twine, so I ran some white embroidery thread over some Distress Ink in old paper to give it a little age.  I then added distress ink to the paper and put it all together with a vintage button from my stash.  It should have a been a quick card, but I just needed a bit more time tonight.

Sympathy Card

Continuing my quest to build my card stash, I just couldn't resist making my own version of this amazing card by Ann Schach from the Paper's Player's blog for challenge number 142.  I just loved it and I love that I get to break out my new Swallowtail stamp from Stampin' Up again.  It took me three, yes three, tries to get this one.  On the first two attempts, I got ink everywhere, but on the third attempt I finally managed to stamp one without getting ink blotches on the card while removing my mask (that's a skill I just haven't mastered yet).   Too bad I didn't fully ink my stamp so the image didn't come out as clean as the first two, but it was good enough that I could live with it.  Unfortunately, I was a little heavy handed on the sentiment from the Fiskars' All Year Greetings set, but I decided I could live with it too.  I just colored it a bit with my colored pencils and called it good.