My niece is turning 4!

 So, one of my nieces is turning 4 in a couple of weeks.  She is such a cutie-patootie!  She is a spitfire combination of "girly girl" who loves hair bows, horses, & mermaids and "tomboy" who romps around playing in the dirt with her brothers and dogs!

Here is the card that I made for her.

I followed a recent YouTube tutorial from Sam Calcott, Mixed Up Crafts, where she made several cards using up scraps. As soon as I saw Sam's Happy Birthday candles card, I knew I wanted to CASE it for my niece.  This was definitely a Clean and Simple (CAS) card that came together quickly. It took me longer to select the scraps than it did to actually complete the card!   It was so very satisfying to use up small pieces of patterned paper.

Most of the scraps are pattern papers from Fun Stampers Journey and a couple are from Stampin' Up!  I cut the scraps 1/2" wide by however long the scrap was.  I laid them out along the front until I was happy with the layout.  Before gluing them down, though, I stamped the sentiment with Ranger Archival black ink.  That way, I knew how much room I needed to leave in order to color in the candle flames. After gluing down the scraps, I cut off the paper that was hanging off the bottom of the card. It's not visible in the picture, but I colored over the flames and the sentiment with a clear glitter pen.

The finished size of this card is 5x7.

Not a Card I Wanted to make This Week

This is so not the kind of card I wanted to make this week.

Unfortunately, we had an unexpected death in our family earlier this week. And, of course, I didn’t have an appropriate sympathy card in my stash ready to go. Pinterest to the rescue for inspiration!

Here is the card that I made:

I inked one side of a Spellbinders double-sided embossing folder before laying down the designer paper & running it through my embossing machine to create the background texture.  The designer paper is retired and is from Stampin Up.  The sentiment was stamped with Stampin’ Up’s Basic Gray ink on a scrap of white cardstock, then run through my die cutter to cut out the shape.  

I laid a piece of lace across the front, then glued the sentiment on top. I layered the card front onto a slightly larger piece of designer paper  (the flip side of the green), then glued that onto my white 5”x 7” card base.

IMPORTANT - please read!

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, PLEASE!!!  Get help or reach out to someone, anyone! If you have no one to whom you can talk or confide in, please call the Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255!  Suicide is never the answer.