Notecards for a 50th Birthday

I can't believe I have a friend who just turned 50 -- that makes me feel old! I know it is still a ways away for me, but it's a reminder that 40 is starting to loom very large. Anyway, my friend had a 50th birthday/Oscar viewing party and I wanted to give her a special present to mark such a big birthday. She is a creative type (although she'd probably tell you that she isn't( and she appreciates handmade things. She also always tells me how much she loves the cards I have made for her daughter's birthdays (which reminds me that at some point I should post the super-cute Angelina Ballerina card I recently made for her daughter's third birthday). Anyway, I figured she'd be getting lot of other presents so I decided to make her some monogrammed note cards that she could use for thank yous.

To keep things uniform and make it look like a set, I used one layout with three different color schemes and made two of each card, for a total of a half a dozen cards. The base cards are an 8.5 by 11 sheet of cardstock cut in half to make two cards that are 5.5 by 4.25 inches folded. I ran each card through my Texture Boutique using the Swiss Dots folder (love it!). Then I cut 5.5 by 3 inch pieces from three different patterned papers leftover from scrapbook pages I had made.

I then picked out coordinating cardstock from a mat stack my boss had given me for the holidays. I had never bought a small stack like this before, thinking I'd rather have larger sheets to cut down than be limited by their small size, but I found that I really liked the wide variety of colors and the ease of flipping through them to choose just the right one. They were also just the right size to make two border strips and punch two scalloped circles from with minimal waste. I used the EK Success Parisian border punch and a Marvy scalloped punch that is about 2 1/4 inches.

I had bought a large "D" stamp because my daughter's name also starts with D (I think it's Hampton Arts? The cheapo $1 ones they sell at Michaels/AC Moore). I stamped the D with Colorbox Fluid Chalk inks (my go-to inks) in Olive Pastel, Lime Pastel and Chestnut Roan on white cardstock and then punched each one out with my 2 inch Fiskars Circle squeeze punch.

I then ran all of the pieces through my trusty Xyron. I layered each D circle onto a coordinating scalloped circle. I wrapped a piece of white ribbon (from Target, leftover from my wedding four years ago) around each patterned paper panel, adhered a border strip and then placed the layered circles on the right side of each patterned panel, over the ribbon. I attached the patterned paper sections to the textured cards and then tied a piece of ribbon in a knot around the already attached ribbon. Finally I punched butterflies using my Martha Stewart punch. I attached them by cutting pop dot circles in half and putting on each wing. Then I topped each butterfly with a crystal gem.

I used one card to write a message to the birthday girl then packaged the other five up by wrapping with some baker's twine. I put them in a fabulous feathered bag (that I wish I had taken a photo of!) and gave them to the birthday girl.

Starburst card (nothing to do with the candy, unfortunately)

So I haven't been blogging, but that doesn't mean I haven't been creating! As my daughter has gotten older, (almost 2 1/2! -- she'll tell you that she's a "big girl") I have been snatching bits of time here and there to make cards and work on her scrapbooks. The scrapbooks are important to me so that she'll have a record of who she is and how she got that way. The cards are important because they are a much lower stress way to exercise my creativity on a small canvas that doesn't necessarily need to be of keepsake quality.

Here's a recent card that I am particularly proud of because it was the first time I created a "starburst" effect with patterned paper (I am sure this isn't the correct terminology for this, but I'm lacking time to look it up). This is something I had seen all over the place in magazines and had been pinning on Pinterest for some time and which, quite frankly looked simple to achieve digitally but too hard to do by hand. I had been struggling with scrapbooking my daughter birth and early days, feeling that no design I could come up with would somehow be special enough. Voila, "starburst" effect layout. But I wanted to practice before I did it on a scrapbook page, so came up with this card design for a co-worker's birthday.

I made a standard 5.5 by 4.25 inch card with white card stock and put a dot in the lower left corner. I then cut a long triangle from patterned paper and lined the point up with the dot. I trimmed off the excess paper that overlapped the edge of the card. Then I cut another triangle and overlapped the first one, also lining up one point with the dot on the card. I repeated until I had covered the card with a rainbow of patterned paper scraps. I thought there was probably a scientific way to do this but I just eyeballed it and I think it came out pretty well.

The point at which all of the papers met was a little sloppy. I toyed with adding a sentiment there but nothing seemed quite right so I saved the sentiment for the inside (it just says "Happy birthday" -- nothing special) and instead added a large paper flower. I layered on a smaller pink flower and of course added a little rhinestone bling in the center (those cheap adhesive gems from Michaels or ACMoore that are like $1/sheet). I stamped the recipient's name with tiny alphabet stamps in one of my favorite inks -- Colorbox Charcoal chalk ink -- added a bit more bling and I was done.

The recipient loved it and put it in her special box of cards that I've made for her that she claims she is keeping for when I'm famous (for doing what, I'm not quite sure, but I appreciate her confidence)! I loved that I used up a bunch of scraps and I got to practice a new technique, all during my daughter's nap time.

One of these days I will have a little more time to make a video or at least take pictures during each step so I can show instead of tell how I did something. Maybe when I (finally) make the scrapbook page of my daughter's birth that making that card is helping me design!