Welcome back to the Joyful Stars Blog Hop! I'm sure Krista's blog had you in awe, so thank you for continuing on to join me here! At the start of the year, I admit I started feeling overwhelmed - overwhelmed with responsibilities, overwhelmed with lack of time, and overwhelmed with stuff, namely crafting supplies. In evaluating some things, I've realized that one of the conclusions I've come to is that I'm just not sending out as many birthday cards as I should be and want to be, especially considering I have all these supplies! So in addition to enacting some other changes, I got myself organized and have started making birthday cards for the upcoming calendar year. Therefore, for this month's blog hop, I am featuring a few birthday cards I have made so far. It turns out some of the stamps I have featured are currently on sale for Stamptacular!
This first card was made in January for my brother-in-law's birthday. He is a HUGE Washington National's fan, so I felt compelled to make him a baseball-themed card, especially since the Nats won the World Series! The longest part of the process was stamping and die cutting the baseballs from the Paper Pal Pets set (yes, it has a baseball!). I also diecut some chipboard and glued each of the stamped baseballs to the chipboard pieces to give the baseballs a little dimension so they would not flip over in the shaker window.
Baseball Birthday Card recipe:
- Z4268 Paper Pal Pets Stamp Set + Thin Cuts - Stamptacular Sale!
- B1495 Play Hard - Baseball stamp set (retired)
- Z2870 Ruby ink
- X5965 Ruby cardstock
- X5957 Sapphire cardstock
- 1385 White Daisy cardstock
- X7229B Stargazer Paper Packet (retired)
- Z3237 White Glitter Paper
- Z3625 Happy Birthday Shaker Window Thin Cuts
- Recollections Chunky Glitter (non-CTMH)
This second card was made for my youngest sister's birthday (Mom, if you're reading this, do not show it to her!). She is immensely fond of dragonflies, so this new dragonfly stamp was just perfect for her card. Purple is also her favorite color, so I used the retired CTMH Pansy Purple card stock and ink to also use up some of my retired stash. 😉 The dragonfly was colored using the Pansy Purple ink and a water brush. There is a lot of embossing as well since she definitely likes the shiny and glittery things!
Dragonfly Birthday Card recipe:
- Z3648 Country Dragonfly Stamp + Thin Cuts - Stamptacular Sale!
- Z3642 Shared Happiness Stamp + Thin Cuts - Stamptacular Sale!
- B1571 Hunting For Words stamp set (retired)
- Pansy Purple cardstock (retired)
- 1385 White Daisy cardstock
- Z3366 Silver Foil paper
- Pansy Purple ink (retired)
- Z891 Versamark ink
- Z4189 Intense Black ink
- Z8000 Black Pigment ink
- Z2067 Ranger Silver Super Fine embossing powder
- Z2088 Ranger Clear Super Fine embossing powder
- X254 White Cards & Envelopes Value Pack
Since I was on a roll in January and there are a number of March birthdays, including a birthday for a male member of my extended family, I continued on by making a number of these birthday cards featuring the bee. I remembered we have a hexagon pattern in our CTMH Cricut Artbooking cartridge that I thought would make a great background for the bee. I used this pattern to cut a 6"x6" stencil out of the Stencil Sheets and blended out Canary ink using this stencil on the card. The bee was also colored with Canary and Mink ink and a water brush. After adhering to the card, I finished it with a Clear Shimmer Brush.
Bee Birthday Card recipe:
- M1264 Country Bee Stamp - Stamptacular Sale (Thin Cuts no longer available)!
- B1571 Hunting For Words stamp set (retired)
- X6047 Black card stock
- Z2843 Canary ink
- Z2825 Mink ink
- Z4189 Intense Black ink
- Z2068 Ranger White Super Fine Embossing Powder
- Z891 Versamark ink
- Z4244 Stencil Sheets
- Z4304 Silver Loose Sequins
- Z3293 Clear Shimmer Brush
