Happy Birthday to Me!

With my birthday having just passed I felt it was a great time to write about my most popular card to date,  the birthday cupcake cards!  I've sold quite a bit of these and have gotten many compliments on how cute they are.

I got the idea for these cards because of the decorative cupcake paper I had purchased (the strip to the left of the card).  It screamed birthday card for sure.  Originally I made all the cards with the pink cupcake but by request I varied the colors.  At first I wasn't too sure how other colors would look against the glittery blue base of the card but once I put the green cupcake and purple cupcake cards together I was quite pleased with the outcome. 

Pretty in Pink

Green Sorbet

Purple Nurple

The base of the cards are made from a glittery blue cardstock.  The cupcakes are attached using pop up squares for a 3D look.  The cupcake wrappers are dry embossed then inked with coordinating colors.  The white frosting on the cards is cut from a shimmery white cardstock.  The cherry on top is also cut from a shimmery cardstock, but red in color (of course).  The "Happy Birthday" captions are stamped in the same color as the ink used on the wrappers then heat embossed for a raised effect.

As of the moment, I have one of these cards still available in my Etsy shop, www.etsy.com/shop/19eighty.

Unfortunately I am only able to make one or two more of these cards since the decorative cupcake paper I have is almost gone.  I tried to find more of it but it was too late.  Its all gone, maybe forever.  I guess that makes these cards "limited editions".

Scrapbook Expo

Today I am heading to the Scrapbook Expo in Anaheim.  I was iffy about going since it's quite a drive due to the nasty traffic we have out here in Southern California but I have made up my mind and plan on braving our extremely congested freeways.  I have been in a creative slump this entire week and need a pick me up.  I am hoping all the new and cool things I see at the Expo will get me excited about making cards this weekend.  I have orders to fill and a shop to stock up!  I need to get moving!    

More cards coming soon

What happens when you go to Vegas for a few days?  Exhaustion happens.  It may be a few more days before I fully recover from a very long (but fun) weekend in Vegas so I don't expect to have any new cards until this weekend.  But then again, it my be a little longer than that since my birthday just so happens to be this coming weekend (not related to my Vegas trip this past weekend).  Until then I may post about my past creations.

I just remembered something.....I better get rested up quickly though seeing that I have a few orders that need to be completed in the next few weeks!

Sunshine on a rainy day

This morning I woke up to a gloomy and rainy day which reflected how sick I felt.  After taking a dose of NyQuil I decided to wait out my time before passing out by making a card.  Feeling yucky definitely didn't hinder my ability to make a cute card.  In fact I made a bright and cheerful card to counter how I felt at the moment.  It's definitely a card that can brighten up someone's day.  

Sunny and cheerful

Pastel flowers add to the cuteness

Perfect way to cheer up a friend

Valentine's Revisited

A few days before Valentine's I had an order for three cards.  These cards were not ones that were premade so that meant *rush* to make them and send them out.  Thankfully my client liked one of the designs I had in my photos on my Facebook page so that made making the cards easier.  I only posted one on the 19Eighty Expressions' Facebook page because the initials of the receivers were on the cards and since one of them is my friend I didn't want her figuring it out before Valentine's.

  As you can see, for all three I used the same design but made each unique by using different paper.  

Sitting In A Tree

An idea came to me while I was looking through a magazine for inspiration, use printed images on cards.  I have seen this before on other cards and other papercrafts but I wasn't sure it's something I wanted to start doing.  I kind of felt like it was cheating since I was using an already made picture rather than me stamping it, coloring it, drawing it, or crafting it out of paper.  I decided to give it a shot anyway just to see what I can create and Sitting in a Tree is it!  Take a gander.

The owls and sentiment are printed onto cardstock
 

Soul Mates

After making this card I realized how printing images onto cardstock opens up a whole new world for my card making.  It's pretty exciting.  So far this is the only card I have made using this technique.  Aside from printing the image another technique I used is embossing.  I dry embossed the brown mat that is behind the image and inked the edges of the white cardstock.   

This is one of the cards featured in my etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/19eighty.

Last minute Valentine's

Oops, I thought I was all set.  It turns out my daughter didn't have enough of the store bought Valentine's to pass out to her class so I either had to go out and buy more or be creative.  I decided to be creative.  Plus I really didn't feel like getting ready to go out.

I used the free Valentine Truffle file that SVG Cuts has posted on their site to make the cute candy truffle.  It kind of makes me want to head out and go to See's looking at all these!

Glittery goodness

Before I added glitter

Looks delicious!

 

I used different colors of glitter on the candy swirl

  A few pictures show the cards before I added the glitter to the candy swirl.  I think the addition of glitter adds more to the card.  I am entering this project in SVG Cuts' Valentine challenge as well.