90th Birthday Bash

On Saturday, we had a 90th Birthday Party for my mother, Joyce. Besides our immediate family, also attending the party was my mother's cousin, also named Joyce, who was also born on the same day!

Though at times my mother was quite confused, she seemed to enjoy herself and the party. I was in charge of food for the event, though my brother had been in touch with people regarding what we could use at my mother's nursing home.

When we got there, of course, things weren't exactly as we had anticipated and I ended up running around like a chicken with her head cut off! Suffice it to say, the food was later than we had planned it to be! Grrrr! Luckily, my brother snapped lots of pictures because I didn't have the chance to do so. I'll be getting some of those from him in time.

The card I designed for my mother was cased from the card in this video by Becca Feeken. Because we had decided to use the colors of purple, silver, and white for the theme of my mother's party, I altered the colors in the card accordingly.

I used Elegant Eggplant to create a gate fold card base, 5 x 6" in size. I cut the decorative panels from Silver Foil and embossed them using the Leafy Vine Embossing Folder from Taylored Expressions. Almost any type of embossing folder produces amazing results when you use foil paper but this turned out especially nice! The panels were adhered to the "gates" using Fuse Fast Adhesive.

Using the Banners Framelits dies, I cut the largest banner from Whisper White Thick card stock and a smaller one from Vellum card stock. On the vellum banner, using Versamark, I stamped the sentiment using both the Project Life Day to Day and the Four You stamp sets. I heat embossed using Silver Stampin' Emboss Powder. I also used a Versamark pen around the edge of the banner and heat embossed that with silver.

I used the Bow Builder Punch to punch out the bow pieces and also heat embossed the edges using the Silver Stampin' Emboss Powder. For the tails and the centre of the bow, I used Silver Foil paper.

A trick I used for the centre piece for the bow was to punch out a foil piece using the Word Window punch and trim it down a bit. I have always found the centre of the bow piece just a little small to work with but the Word Window punch worked great for a centre piece!

I adhered the vellum banner to the white one using glue dots which I then hid by mounting the bow on top. The banners were adhered to one side of the gate fold using Dimensionals. I placed Dimensionals on the opposite side as well so that the popped up banner would look equal but I did not remove the paper piece from the Dimensionals.

I cut a matte of Whisper White for the inside of the card and use the "swoosh" stamp from Everything Eleanor to stamp the edges in both Perfect Plum and Elegant Eggplant. I used sponge daubers to ink the edges in the corresponding inks.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

For my mother's cousin, Joyce, I created a card using one of my favorite patterned papers from the now retired, Fresh Prints Designer stack.

I cut two balloons using the Balloon Framelits Dies, one from Coastal Cabana and one from Real Red to match the designer paper. After establishing the placement I wanted, I used the framelits again to cut an opening in the designer paper for a "shaker" balloon.

Using my Fuse Tool and a page protector, I created a balloon filled with sequins that coordinated with the designer paper. I taped the shaker piece to the back of the designer paper and then adhered the panel to a piece of Baked Brown Sugar card stock. This was first inked with Bermuda Bay ink and then mounted on a Real Red matte that had been inked with a fine line of Basic Black Archival ink. This was then mounted onto a Coastal Cabana card base using Dimensionals.

Using a Two-Way Glue Pen, I ran a fine line around each balloon die cut and then added Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I then tied a piece of thick Coastal Cabana twine to each die cut and used a glue dot to attach a third piece to the "shaker" balloon.

I used "Celebrate" from the Expressions Natural Elements and used a paint dauber to paint it Real Red. I covered it with Versamark, half at a time, and heat embossed it with Clear Stampin' Emboss Powder to make it shiny. The strings from the balloon were tied to the "C" and the sentiment was adhered to the card front using the Fine Tip Glue Pen.

On a Whisper White matte I stamped the balloon from the Celebrate Today stamp set using Coastal Cabana and my MISTI. MISTI definitely came in handy because I had to re-stamp a few times to get the balloon to be completely stamped. I stamped the string in Smoky Slate.

I then stamped in Versamark, using the project Life Day to Day set, and heat embossed in silver. I inked the edges of the matte with Real Red and adhered the matte inside the card.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Two totally different birthday cards but I loved creating each of them. Hope you have enjoyed reading about my process!