Seize the Birthday: Embossed

 

Testing 1...2...3... - is this thing on? I cannot believe it has been almost a year since I posted on my blog. 2023 was a bit of a blur and crafting time was hit and miss. One challenge I always like to play in is Seize the Birthday as birthday cards are what I make the most.

This card features a dry embossed rattan background. The Lisa Horton tulips are also dry embossed and die cut. They are meant for a slimline card, but this is 5X7 inches.

World Card Making Day Challenge #4

Hello , Blogland, long time, no see. Here is a card I made for World Card Making Day, courtesy of inspiration from Victoria Calvin, who challenged Scrapbook & Cards Today fans to make a layered card. This was Challenge #2 of five issued last Saturday. I am working my way through the challenges in an out-of-order fashion.

The dies I used are Spellbinders borders and motif and a Spellbinders Glimmer Foil Plate for the sentiment. The background is a piece of Tim Holtz paper.

Hope you can see the reflecting of the foil above. It's quite pretty in real life.

Sarcasti-chick Birthday

Here's a colourful birthday card. I liked pairing the My Favorite Things Sassy Birthday Sentiment with the Taylored Expressions Sarcasti-chick image.

The festive garlands are a Taylored Expressions background stamp that I heat embossed in white and then blended Distress Inks overtop. The chick is mounted on a wobble action spring so she jiggles around. A lot of fun!

I am entering my chick in the Seize the Birthday Challenge for All Creatures Great and Small.

Dachshund Through The Snow

My daughter's friends have an adorable Dachshund named Olive and we occasionally get to spend time with her. So I knew just the card I wanted to make for them for Christmas.

The SVG file was free (possibly from lovesvg.com). I chose to cut around the silhouette and pop that up on the front of the card. To do this, I traced outside the entire dog in Silhouette Studio software and then erased all the cut lines from the body. 

I finished the bottom of the card with the Memory Box Frostyville Border die cut from glitter paper. I embossed with the same die across the envelope to keep with the theme. All in all, a fun card to make and give. I am entering this in the Cut It Up Challenge for White on White with a Pop of Colour.

I leave you with a photo of sweet Olive with her advent calendar:

Seize the Dots and Stripes

Here's my card for the current Seize the Birthday #161 Challenge. My stripes are die cut in the word HOPE, a new purchase from Concord & 9th that came with matching sentiment stamps.

I made the background with Distress Oxide inks on Bristol Smooth paper. I used Peacock Feathers, Dusty Concord and Spun Sugar. Then I splattered with water. The "dots" are black embellishment gems.

Seize the Birthday - Make Us Laugh #160

One of my favourite challenge sites is Seize the Birthday. Any time you want to make a birthday card, you can go check out all the inspiration there, and they always have an Anything Goes theme - with optional "toppings." This time the option is to make a humorous card.

I have a Stampin' Up! stamp set called Birthday Wit that is perfect for this challenge. I bought it for the sentiment I featured on my card front - with a specific recipient in mind. But the set has some other witty sayings that are more generic so this stamp set will be well-used.

This is a monocromatic card. I stamped and embossed the diagonal striped background and the leaves with Rose Gold Embossing Powder by Ranger. I find this colour to be more taupe than rose gold.

Stripes: My Favorite Things; Leaves: Waltzingmouse; Sentiment: SU!

I stamped the sentiment in Ranger's Adirondack Earthtones Mushroom dye ink, which is almost a perfect match to the embossing powder because it is sort of a taupe colour, too. Mounted on navy cardstock. Inside I stamped this:

Thanks for visiting today! 

Freshly Made Sketches 376

I made a card for the Freshly Made Sketches blog challenge. Here's the sketch:

And here's my card:

The paper was a failed attempt at the Layered Batik Resist technique described in a Splitcoast tutorial here. While the front of the paper was a mess, I really liked the back of the paper after ironing, so decided to stamp a few blue blooms on that and use it for my feature panel.

Here's a close-up of the hot-fix Swarovski crystals and the Avery Elle celebrate die. I have gotten a lot of use out of that set of word dies.

This card also works for the CAS challenge at Splitcoast to use Thirds.

Rinse and Repeat!

Yesterday I posted a card for the Seize the Birthday Anything Goes #159 Challenge and I am back today with a second entry. You can never have too many birthday cards.

The patterned paper and Spellbinders dies did most of the work here. The small cluster of flowers (W Plus 9 Very Vintage Florals) was stamped and fussy cut with scissors and popped up with foam tape.  The clear-embossed sentiment is a retired Waltzingmouse stamp. A strip of dollar store gemstones finished it off nicely.

Still time to play along.

A Winter Birthday

I wish you could see this card's background in real life. I had a lot of fun making it. I started out with a background of alcohol inks in blues and purples. Then I lifted off snowflake shapes with Alcohol Lift Ink. 

Then I added some holographic heat-embossed snowflakes for some shimmery fun. They just show up when the card is tilted.

Lastly, I ran the background through my Cuttlebug with a snowflake embossing folder. It added a bit more subtle texture. I didn't want to cover up too much of the background, so I kept the Copic coloured bird and sentiment minimal. 

Thanks for visiting today! I am entering this in the Facebook Scrap 'N Stamp Challenge Page for the current All That Sparkles Challenge. 

Purple Stippled Flowers

The optional "toppings" challenge at Seize the Birthday this week is Foliage. I hope my few leaves here and there count! For this birthday card I chose to use the Gina K Designs Stippled Flowers set. I embossed the blooms and die cut them, along with lots of leaves. The card design was based on a card Gina made for the launch of this set. She embossed in white but I chose gold.

I used Zig Clean Color Watercolor Markers and a water brush to colour them, then touched up with a purple Copic marker here and there.

Gina layered on a Swiss Dot dry embossed background, but I chose an Anna Griffin Poppy design. I popped a few of the flowers up with foam tape to add some dimension. I added a strip of tape and some purple glitter to the dividing border.

The sentiment is from a separate Gina K Designs stamp set, Bold & Blooming. I added a few pale purple Swarovski Crystals to finish it off. Thanks for visiting today!

Stencilled Birthday Card

Over at Splitcoaststampers there was a challenge to create a card with a stencil. Seize the Birthday's challenge is "Anything Goes."

I had wanted this particular stencil for a very long time and once I finally got hold of it - it sat unused. Why does that happen? So this was a good time to get it out.

I layered Ranger Opaque Matte Texture Paste through the Stampers Anonymous stencil onto some very old patterned scrapbook paper that I have been saving for a special card. After it dried, I used Versamark to adhere Perfect Pearls to the flowers and vines for colour and shimmer.

The Quietfire Design sentiment was stamped on a Stampin' Up Word Window Punch tag and tied with a ribbon. Thanks for visiting today.

A Birthday Bendi Card

Have you seen Bendi Cards? They were all the rage a few years ago but I am a late-adopter, so this is my first one. I wanted a special card for my mom's birthday, so I pulled out all the stops to make this one.

Incredibly, I started with this Christmas bendi card file from 3dsvg.com.

It's a 3-layer free-standing card that I modified for my purposes. I really liked the fence and the general shape of the card and did not want to have to do any math to develop my own base! Here is what I created by modifying the card base file:

It is a 3D card that, when the tabs are undone, folds flat for mailing. Here is a slightly side angle.

I used charming digital papers from the Nitwit Birdsong Collection. My mom loves birds so this seemed perfect. There are three birds tucked among the greenery. I like how the birds seem to be looking at the quote.

The quote and ribbon bow are also digital files from the same collection (I added a crystal gemstone). 

For the back of this card, I created a focal point using the "alphawits" in the collection. It is so nice to have everything coordinate, and if I run out, I can just print more! 

Thanks for visiting today! I am entering this card at Seize the Birthday.