Thank You Cards

Today I had two main goals to complete. I needed to make about 20 Thank You cards for my niece to send to her family for all of the wonderful gifts for her 2nd birthday and I also needed to create all of the components for a racecar cupcake cake that I am making for my nephew's birthday party tomorrow, complete with a fondant Mario. Did I mention that I have NEVER made anything out of fondant before? I will post the completed cake and his birthday cake soon, but here is a sneak peek at Mario.



I love the way he came out! The yellow things will be headlights on the racecar. But on to my other goal, the thank you cards. I wanted to keep them simple but still cute.

Little birdie is from Create a Critter and the background shape is from Accent Essentials.

I love this stinkin' owl from Create a Critter...it is soooo cute and I especially love it this crazy patterned paper!

I am thinking that the zebra card is my favorite! Gotta love purple zebra paper and the black twine!

This button matches almost exactly with the background paper and I love the contrast of it with the purple and black.

I just love turtles so much...just ask my pet turtle, Donatello! The paper on this one is the Nana's Kids stack, which has a lot of great prints! I also embossed the green paper with Swiss Dots.

When I was getting floss for my new Sew Easy, I picked up a variety pack of crafting cord and I really like it! It's a nice change from ribbon and gives a lot of the same effects as twine, but I can get it in tons of colors for a low price.

This one is really simple but still cute! The kitty is from Create a Critter and I just tied a simple black ribbon around it for a completed look.

I spent a ton of time working on my two goals today but I can say they are completed and I am so happy with them! And, it's all because I absolutely love my nieces and nephews!!!!

More Boy Cards

Well, I had to take a break from my boy cards to work on Tinkerbell; between that and working almost every day, I haven't had a lot of time to craft. I am the type of person that needs hours to devote to crafting--I don't usually craft if I only have an hour or two! I had time yesterday and finished up some more boy cards.

All of the cuts on this card are from Create a Critter. I left the firehat off of the dog and did some doodling around for details. I also embossed the sky with D'Vine Swirls and the dog house with a Sizzix texture plate that I can't recall the name of right now!

For this one, the llama is from Birthday Bash and the sentiment is a stamp by S&P Company. I also embossed the orange paper with the Cuttlebug Number Collage and added a few red brads.

I got this skating buffalo and sentiment from Birthday Bash--who thought a rollerskating buffalo could be so cute? I used twine from the The Twinery and tied on a button. I did the typical doodling and I think it turned out really cute!

The next two cards are from Sports Mania. I really like this cartridge and I don't think I use it enough on my cards.

I like the simplicity of this football card and I think it could be used for a guy of any age. The base of the card is kraft paper and I used yellow behind the sentiment to be like the penalty flag.

So, in theory, I like this card. When I resized it to fit the standard A2 card, it warped the baseball a little bit. If I were to remake it, I would fix that but overall I like it. I doodled in black this time and used the Sew Easy to stitch the baseball which is my favorite part about the whole card!

I think I have about 10 more boy cards to make and I haven't even used my new Boys Will Be Boys cartridge!

My First Sew Easy Card

I got my coveted Sew Easy piercing tool by We R Memory Keepers last week and have had exactly no time to play with it until today. I decided not to sub today and stay home and work on some household chores and crafts. I made this card to fit into my masculine card challenge that I set for myself and wanted to use my new tool.

I used the birthday cake from Simply Charmed and S&P stamp set, as well as basic cross stitch thread that I picked up at Michael's. I wanted to do the stitching across the top and bottom of the dotted paper but I couldn't get the piercer to go through--something I will have to work on in the future.

I like how the stitching turned out and I can't wait to practice more in the very near future!



A Tinkerbell Party

I love being an aunt soooo much! I would do anything for my three nieces and two nephews and I love to make things for them, both on holidays and just because!

This little lady turned two yesterday and my mom thought I could make her birthday cake! We have been talking about it for a while and I have been formulating ideas---aka obsessing over it---for a few weeks. I thought of a cute design that showcased Tinkerbell and was supposed to use fondant. I planned on putting a paper Tinkerbell on the cake and then handcutting letters out of fondant. Fast forward to Friday night and too sticky fondant--Cricut had to take over! (In my dreams I had a Cricut cake and pre-made fondant!)

I precut Tinkerbell and the letters, baked two 11x13 white cakes, made strawberry filling and buttercream icing, leveled the cake, filled it, stacked the two cakes and fully iced them before transporting them an hour to my mom's to decorate!

My niece was so interested in watching me decorate and it made any stress disappear! She kept saying "My cake!" and "It's beautiful!" She sat on my husband's lap for the entire time and watched everything I did. Of course, she was rewarded with some icing!

Here is the finished project and a few more pictures of the birthday party!



A Special Tinkerbell Card

My beautiful, wonderful, rambunctious, sassy, smart, silly niece is turning 2 on Sunday (sniff, sniff) and she is having a Tinkerbell birthday party. Of course, I wanted to make her a special card. I was looking through the Tinkerbell and Friends handbook and I saw the little Tink that looks like she is sitting on something with her legs hanging over. I immediately thought that she should sit on a 2.

Then, in a stroke of pure genius, I decided to do an easel card! I absolutely love, love, love how it turned out. This is my favorite card that I have made so far!

The card is a 4 1/4 inch base and I think I cut the 2 at 3 3/4 from Varsity Letter. I wanted Tink to have a nice ledge to sit on.

Tink is about 4 inches and is fully Stickled so she sparkles and shimmers perfectly! The paper is Poteeka Souffle and I love it!

The sentiment is cut from Lyrical Letters and welded with Design Studio. Ribbon is cheapy ribbon from Walmart.

This card turned out exactly as I dreamed it in my head and I can not wait to give it to my niece...then take it away before she tears it to shreds! ;)

Blog Candy Winner!

 Thank you all so much for the wonderful comments and becoming followers on my blog! I greatly enjoyed the blog hop and hope to participate in more in the future!

I used random.org to generate a number for the winner...the result was #60!

The winner, Sue in CT said: "Great cards. I love the tri-folded shutter the most. I love the colors/paper you used and all them folds are just so wonderful. It is something that I think people who walk by would have to take a second look at. Very pretty."

Watch your email and thanks so much for the great comment!

Masculine Birthday Cards

First of all, thanks soooo much to all of my new followers and all of the comments on my blog hop post from yesterday! I will leave it open today and pick a winner on Monday! I am so, so excited to have so many new followers and I look forward to sharing my crafts and looking at everyone elses blog's as well!

Now for my personal challenge...
I set myself a challenge to complete 25 masculine birthday cards--a HUGE undertaking because I like all types of girly things and don't find a lot of motivation to make stuff for boys. I started sketching and was pretty proud of the designs that I came up with and I ordered Boys Will Be Boys, which has been on my wish list for a while. I was able to grab it from Ebay for a good price/free shipping and I should be getting it in a few days.

Anyway, I have made 7 so far--6 for the Cards for Soldiers group and one for my sister's boyfriend. You can see the first two cards here and here. I thought I would post the others in groups of 5.

Mr. Snake is from Create a Critter, the background paper is Recollections Bright and Basic, embossing is Spots and Dots and the twine is from The Twinery.

The Ipod is from Rock Princess (who knew you could make boy cards with a cartridge named Rock Princess!), background paper is The Paper Studio Classics and the pod is cut from DCWV Shimmer Stack--makes it look so real!

Rex from Toy Story and background paper is DCWV Animal Crackers. Originally I thought Rex would be pretty easy to put together--I DID NOT account for those stinking little teeth. I had to draw some in with the white pen because I couldn't get those teensy-weensy little pieces to cut right!

Not really my favorite (didn't turn out exactly like I pictured in my head), but the presents and hat are from Simply Charmed, embossing is Swiss Dots and Sizzix Birthday Stars and background paper is Recollections Bright and Basic.

Oh, Mr. Hook is last for today! His teeth were a hassle too! I cut his hook from DCWV Shimmer Stack so it looks like real metal. I think the background paper is from Recollections All Girl stack and the sentiment is from S&P Stamps.

All done for now! Should have five more cards shortly...I am making a Tinkerbell cake for my niece's 2nd birthday this weekend so I will be working on that this week as well!