Ribbon & Rhinestones Birthday Blog Hop

Day 1.

Project. Card.

Objective. Awesomeness!

I was SO excited when Stacy, the Ribbon DIVA, invited me to participate in this blog hop. What could any girl love more than ribbon and rhinestones? Answer? Nothing. ;) So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Stacy!! I hope you are having the most amazing birthday!!!

Now I'll admit, I'm not much of a card maker. So I've been "forcing" myself lately, to get more into it. I've learned all kinds of things about stamps and border punches! This may have been a bad thing. haha!

First of all, if you started off on my blog and want to start at the beginning of the hop, check out Stacy's blog here, and we'll see ya when you get back to my blog.

Ok. So here's the card I created. The color palette I went with is black, and shades of pink and teal. The one ribbon is an olive-y green. The picture makes it look yellow. :S I'm pretty much obsessed with teals/aquas/turquoise right now. SUCH a fun color, and perfect for the spring/summertime!

I had a lot of fun playing with dimension in this one! The main card is made from core'dinations cardstock, the rest of the paper is from Echo Park. Love them. LOVE. THEM.

The card itself is 5x7. I cut the background paper at about 4.5-ish x5. I didn't actually measure it, I just laid out the circles on my card, and estimated a little extra room for the border punch and ribbon. Then cut my paper at that estimated length. (I'm very precise and technical when I craft, can you tell? lol!) The circles were all on a 12x12 paper from Echo Park, ("Script Polka Dot" from the Be Mine collection. The background is just the reverse side of the polka dots) and I just cut out 20 of them, then inked the edges, and adhered them to my background paper using foam dots, to raise them up. In between the circles, I used a rhinestone from My Mind's Eye "Lush" collection in the teal.

The ribbon came from American Craft's "Dear Lizzy" line. It's just two ribbons, layered together using Tacky Tape. The border punch was from EK Success, which I inked once I punched it out. Inking is just fun!

Confession. I don't own a Cricut. Or any die cutting machine. Haven't been able to buy one, and I haven't decided which I want when I finally DO buy one. Definitely not a Cricut. I refuse to be limited to cartridges. I'm leaning toward a Pazzle. Thoughts? I made the Happy Birthday tag in Adobe Illustrator. I created the shape by putting two of these: {} together in a cute font, then "welded" them together. Then I used the font American Typewriter. Then it was just print and cut. I used foam dots again, for dimension. The patterned paper behind it is also from the Be Mine collection from Echo Park. (Have I mentioned I love their paper? No? I LOVE THEM. lol)

Thank you for stopping by my blog while making the rounds! Come back tomorrow, and I'll have another project. Now that we have a birthday card, we need a fun present to go with it! ;) The next stop on the hop is over with Cathy at http://cathiescafe-scraphappy.blogspot.com/. Have so much fun, and we'll see you back here tomorrow! I'll have some fun blog candy to go along with the present project post. :D You won't want to miss it!

Birthday Cards

I was so excited to be asked by the Relief Society president in my church (I'm LDS) to make birthday cards each month for the women in the ward! Finally a job in church I can do AND enjoy! LOL! I had a lot of fun with these. Normally, I'm not much of a card maker. Or a scrapbooker. I think I narrowed down WHY I don't do cards or scrapbook often. When I make something, like a jewelry piece, I have TONS of beads, charms, ribbon, chain, etc. in front of me to choose from. I start, back up, change things out, keep going, make another change and so on until I have a piece I'm happy with. It's REALLY hard to do that with paper and embellishments. Once it's down on the page, it's down for good. Unless you want to completely start over and then waste all of that paper. Ya just can't unstick paper. Doesn't work too well. ;)

ANYWAY. So here's what I came up with for the June birthday card:

I thought the yellows, blues and oranges were the perfect combination of colors for the first month of summer! The yellow textured paper is from Core'dinations, the other papers are from the So Sophie line from My Mind's Eye.

I had to make 10 in all. I'm definitely not used to having to make so many of the same thing! lol!

This is such a fun pattern! I love the hint of pink in there with the more melon-y colors. Super fun color combination.

I'm new to the whole border punch thing, but I am LOVING this one from Martha Stewart. I especially love that it came with a corner one. How genius is that?

Orange houndstooth? Yes please!

I created this tag in Adobe Illustrator. The Happy Birthday font is called Doris Day and has totally become my most favorite font! Thanks, Skip, for sending me that one! I'm such a font nerd. lol. Once I stuck the tag down, I used my permaball pen from Pilot to draw an outline around it.

And, because I loves ya, I created a download of the tag for you. :) If you want it. Just click the little image of the arrow pointing down to download it.



Happy Mother's Day everyone!!