These birthday cards I created feature Chocolate Chip card stock – this is one colour I hope Stampin’ Up *never* retires because it’s simply delicious. The card front is then layered with some fresh greens and purples, with a darker purple oval that I think really makes the Birthday greeting “pop”.

Lots of embellishments on these ones: white rub-ons, rhinestones, embossed background, paper piercing in an oval (with a similar stamped “pierced” circle echoed nearby), inked edges, glittery chipboard flowers, and a beautiful satiny ribbon.

Happy Stamping! And if you’re looking for holiday greeting cards, don’t forget to swing by my Card Store!

* If this string of words leaves you thinking I really can’t spell, check the Canadian flag again. Oh. There you go.

My son’s cards went out to his teachers on time (at the end of June), but my daughter, who was greatly opposed to the idea of appreciation cards or gifts (apparently this is just “not done” at the middle school level), left them in her bag where they suffered water damage at an end-of-the-year pool party…

They were then found later in the summer, rescued from the enveloppes (which had to be tossed), repackaged, and given directly to the office at the beginning of the new school year. I had compromised by not adding gift cards to the coffee stores inside but this year I may be less inclined to agree to any plans proposed by such an unreliable letter-carrier.

Thankfully, these pics of the cards were taken before the water damage…

Colours: I went with a slightly different colour palette for the “male” and “female” cards, but kept the Chocolate Chip & White the same for both. The main batch of cards had a base in Blushing Bride with a little bit of Pale Plum (retired). The second batch of cards used Certainly Celery with So Saffron and a felt flower in Baja Breeze.

Stamps: I used the Kind Thanks set for the “A note of thanks” sentiment on the front. All other stamped images were created with the “Priceless” stamp set (now retired).

Techniques & Embellishments: Paper-piercing, torn edges, scallop edge punched border, scallop trim punched border, corduroy buttons, felt flowers, ribbon, brads, scorred lines as decorative element.

The inside of the cards were pretty much the same… to save time on writing out the message by hand, I designed a greeting on the computer and printed it out many times on one sheet of cardstock. I trimmed it to fit inside the cards and placed one inside each. I think my daughter opted to write out her own greeting anyways, but it was especially helpfuly for my son who was just learning to write.

That’s all for now! Happy stamping!

My mother was stopping by and mentioning she didn’t yet have a card so I was like “Um… do you want me to bring my card store to the front door!?”. Oh yeeeaah. People tend to forget I make cards! Even if it’s one of the few things I can actually do these days besides a very small amount of housekeeping and child-raising tasks…

So I’d totally been on a card roll anyways during that time and was able to create and extra couple of cards without too much extra difficulty…

As much as I cringe and complain about not having a “real” dinning room, it is really handy to be able to have a scrapbooking area where I can leave my stuff lying around without having to worry about tidying it all up and leaving things looking neat and tidy like I might feel more pressured too if we had an actual dinning set there.

I really went all out for these ones with all sorts of great papers, colours and embellishments… lots of brads, rhinestone stickers, stamped images (butterflies, flowers), punched borders, two-step stamping techniques, paper-piercing technique, little flowers, etc! My “SIL” hasn’t really seen a lot of my work, so might as well make a great first impression, right? I hear it really did wow her and got passed around the table with similar reactions as well so for me that’s the best reward for the creative work that I do. The best part of a hand-made card is just that extra punch of glitz and shine. And since you’ve already heard my “why give something store-bought when you can get (or make!) a card that carries so much more depth and warmth to it?” spiel, I’ll just remind you where my online card store is and mention that the 2nd card in this set is up for sale!

Happy Stamping! ♥