Paper-Paisleys Art Adventures: Time for Some Birthday Cards

Welcome and take a load off for a bit! Hope your holidays are going well.

January and February are busy birthday months in my world, including my own birthday in February. So, while I wanted to make a few HNY right now, I shall concentrate instead on birthday cards, and I have one made already

This first card is for our niece who is turning 19. She is hip and stylish so I try to give her a card she can be proud of, or, er, um, not embarrassed by, lol. I am very happy with the way this one turned out and may even recreate its general elements and design. I believe she will like it. I used the above Sunday Stamps sketch, making the top layer mat a bit bigger to accommodate the Stamplorations sentiments.

I had purchased a pack of Pebbles A2 cards for the cute designs on them but as stand-alone cards they are limp and thin. I like a crisper heavier card base, so I simply turned the Pebbles card base inside out so that I could layer the outside with card stock. The outer design is now the inside of my card. I plan to cut some of the card bases in half to use as mat layers for future cards. I used a Spellbinders Labels Nestie to cut a mat for the Hot Off The Press sentiment.

The patterned card stock you see is from Avery Elle's Everyday Collection. The red mats are actually construction paper, except for the top layer which is a scrap of card stock which miraculously is the same red shade. I have a lot of construction paper in different colors, when I need a thin outline to show I use it because you can't really tell it's thinner than card stock. I used Recollections 110# white card stock for my white stamping base, which is so thick and stiff it will not feed through my printers. So this card ended up being quite sturdy indeed.

You may have noticed the word 'amazing' is used multiple times. The more I found, the more I used. At one time years ago, I thought those Autumn Leaves bar code stamps were so cool. Now they come in handy for the card backs.