My other card creations - Birthdays

Hi there,

I was recently going through my file of cards that I have made in the last few years and thought I would share some with you. These are not stamped cards but something a little different.

These three Birthday cards were made especially for people I know - the two 80th and 50th Birthday cards were commissioned by a friend of mine for two friends of hers. (I have made a few cards now for my friend and she is one of my best customers! )

When making a specific card for someone, I ask about their colour preferences, their hobbies

and whether they like traditional or modern cards then go away and plan to make something unique and special for them. So far, I have been successful and the cards have been well received - I must be doing something right!

For this first card, I was told that the birthday lady loved gardening and the odd tipple of wine and while looking through my stash of supplies, I came across some manilla 'luggage' tags and suddenly had a bright idea to use them to make miniature cards, similar to ATC's.

This is the outside of the card - it's a little hard to see but the Peel-Off greeting says 'Happy 80th Birthday'.

I love this vintage floral paper which I bought in a scrapbook shop somewhere - it may be a K & Company design, I can't remember.

On the inside of the card, I made a little co-ordinating pocket to hold the concertina tags.

Here is the front view of the 4 tags - I decorated each panel with papers, stickers and flowers bearing in mind the recipient's love of gardening and wine.

Not liking to leave anything undone, I also decorated the back of the tags !

This was a good place to incorporate the Birthday greeting which was actually an acetate sticker from a little K & Company pad I have - I love the 'Victorian Charm' of their papers and stickers.

For the second card, I thought of another 'twist' and made a 'card within a card' - this one was a hit with my friend and also the Birthday girl.

Here is the front of the main 'outer' card.

My friend thought it was lovely but she was really impressed when she saw what I had put inside ! It was a four page mini album incorporatiing all the Birthday girl's favourite things

and even though I didn't know it at the time, the woman was treating herself to a widescreen TV for her Birthday so my motif on the front page was extra special to her.

This view is of the front page (on the right) and the back page (on the left). Like all we crafty people, I find inspiration in the most unlikely places !

For her TV hobby, I cut out DVD covers from a junk mail catalogue, mounted them on some cardstock to give them some 'body' then mounted them on 3D foam squares.

Here is a close up of these two pages.

Here are the two inner pages of the mini album.

And a close up of these two pages -

I cut out the wine bottles from the weekly supermarket catalogue and the books from another junk mail catalogue.

I co-ordinated the background papers on each page and added flowers and other embellishments to match.

I haven't really done much scrapbooking but I surprised myself when I did these two cards -

when I look at a blank 12 x 12 page, I find it hard to visualise what I'm going to do on the page yet find it much easier to think in terms of 'mini' layouts - must be the card-maker in me coming through! LOL - Does anyone else have the same problem ?

Finally, here is a card I made for my youngest Grandson, Tyler, for his 4th birthday in 2007.

I had these lovely bright Birthday stickers and wanted to make something colourful for him and thought of using his photo on the card to personalise it.

He loved the card and he is now a budding scrapper too like his mother (my daughter).

She is a whiz at scrapbooking and in contrast to me, finds it hard to work on smaller projects like cards ! We obviously share the same creative genes and have a lot of fun when we get together for crafting sessions - we've been away on weekend Scrapping Retreats in the last two years and had a ball at those.

If you can imagine 50 -70 crazy women all yakkin' and scrappin' at the same time in the same room, you'll know what I mean ! It's a hoot ......

Well, this was a very long post but I just wanted to show you that I do other things besides stamping and love to try out different techniques and learn about other papercraft ideas.

I hope you liked looking at these 3 projects. Thanks for stopping by - hope you'll come back again soon !

Happy crafting until next time. :-)