Four Levels of a Birthday Card

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Four Levels of a Birthday Card

Hi there again!

Today I thought I'd show you a birthday card I made, and how I worked through four different designs of the same card before I glued it together. (Gluing it together is what I do only after I'm completely, absolutely, certain-sure it's how I want the card to look!. Yup, learned that lesson the hard way, folks! lol)

So, here's the first sample:

I used Cajun Craze and Crumb Cake cardstock (cs), along with some Whisper White. I cut the card 9 1/2" x 4 1/4" (scored at 5 1/2"). If you look closely at the picture you can see the Cajun Craze cs doesn't completely cover the front of the card. The Whisper White cs pieces are 2" x 2", 1 1/2" x 2", 2 1/2" x 1" and 1" x 1". The Crumb Cake cs is 3 3/4" x 3 1/4".

All I did for this sample was assemble some images from the Create-A-Cupcake and Party This Way stamp sets on the Crumb Cake section. It's pretty plain and, to me, it looks like a great "Man Card". :)

However, I was making this card for a very special friend of mine so I started playing with other options. Here's my next idea:

So, it's the same layout, I just added two pieces of Daffodil Delight cs, with one piece run through the Scallop Trim Borderpunch. It's a small change but it really looks different, doesn't it?

I really like that look and may actually make that one in the future, but I wanted something a little more special for this card. I could have blinged it up by adding some Dazzling Diamonds to the images but decided to check out my stash of "free things I got during some random Sale-A-Bration that I hesitate to ever use because then it will be gone". lol Guess what? I found the perfect thing!

Yup, looks totally different now, doesn't it? The background "paper" is actually cs that came as part of a kit, already cut and scored to make a number of cards. However I thought it was too pretty to just use it that way. What the picture doesn't show is that some of the dots are gold! That makes it all shiny, especially since I punched out more gold dots on coordinating paper (that also came with the kit) and the flame on the candle. (I used the Cupcake Builder punch for that.)

I also punched out some Pacific Point and Pistachio Pudding dots, and stamped and cut out a Pistachio Pudding balloon. So I was almost happy with it but felt it needed one more thing...