Lotsa Birthday cards

We had a family get together where 4 of our family members have January birthdays... luckily two of them are my parents, so I know they don't mind if I give them a combined card, hence you see 3 cards :)

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This first card was for my niece, and at first I made it using the watercolor technique I had used in the past but without the right watercolor paper, it was annoying me how it curled up and didn't blend that great... ok so scrapped that and just used your typical dry technique - using a Tim Holtz inker with blending foam. It was nice to use the butterfly misting masks while I inked so it left those spots blank, then later embossed some butterfly stamps there.

HOW-TO:

• Used regular drawing paper to ink on, so it would blend well
• Tim Holtz inks: peeled paint, broken china and faded jeans with blending foam
• Studio Calico butterfly misting masks, butterfly stamps and sentiment stamps
• Embossing powder by American Crafts in: Aqua, Wave and Leaf

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For the second card, I wanted to make it look like a book because we were giving my stepsister a gift card for Amazon for her Kindle. I loved how it turned out and I used my Zig embossing pen to write her name in cursive and emboss it with gold powder.

HOW-TO:

• The reddish-orange paper for the "binding" was by DCWV, which I cut to 2 inch width, then wrapped around the edge of the Kraft paper, so the back side had some showing too and looked like binding rather than a cut strip of paper
• The middle embellishment was cut on my Cricut Imagine using the Reminisce Accents cartridge by Creative Memories and Provo Craft
• The letter stickers are by My Mind's Eye
• I used the Zig embossing pen to write her name and embossed with gold embossing powder from Martha Stewart Crafts

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The last card was for my parents, and basically just did the easy way of making this flower embellishment again.

HOW-TO:

• The hard and easy tutorial for making the large embellishment is in this earlier blog entry of mine
• I embossed around the embellishment with the Zig embossing pen and the sentiment stamp from Recollections with Copper embossing powder from Martha Stewart Crafts
• The button is from the Lost & Found collection by My Mind's Eye
• The twine is from Jillibean Soup