Hi, there! I have a very simple birthday shaker card to share with you today, featuring one of the monsters from Mo Manning’s Cupcake Monster stamp set. You can get the set as one merged stamp with a big cupcake monster and seven small monsters surrounding it, or a separated version, which is what I’ve used for today’s card.
I colored my monster with Copics and did some serious fussy cutting. That monster is tiny, and it’s a miracle I didn’t chop off the flame at the top of the candle.
I love the Stitched Happy Birthday rectangle die from Memory Box, but I don’t use it nearly enough. For this card, though, I pulled it out and die cut it seven times from white card stock. I removed the sentiment from six of them, gluing the frames together for dimension to create my shaker area.
For the background, I wanted a color that would allow the sentiment to show and the monster to pop, so I chose a piece of patterned paper from the Bloom Street collection from Pink Paislee. The paper I chose has a watercolor look to the back of it, which was perfect to complement my little monster. I used the largest of the A2 Stitched Rectangle dies from My Favorite Things and adhered it directly to my card base, placing the shaker frame in the center.
I filled the shaker with clear and iridescent crystals from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards, and added the top layer with the sentiment, that I’d already glued to a piece of acetate. The last thing was to add my little monster in the corner, and the card was complete.
Not a lot of colors used for this card, but that monster is tiny.
I started by coloring the polar bear (
I love the snowflake circle die from Hero Arts and have used it many times before. I die cut a window into the center of the front of my card base, and at first thought that would be it. Once it morphed into a trifold, though, it was so back heavy that I needed an additional two die cut windows on top of the card base for some strength and stability. I used the largest of the A2 Stitched Rectangles from My Favorite Things to create a nice finished edge to the top layer.
For the inside panel that you can see from the front, I stamped the 
I stamped a sentiment from the 
In this photo it’s pretty evident that the three layers of panels with die cut windows add a nice bit of dimension, as well as stability to what would otherwise be a pretty floppy card front, since the window is so big. I use 110 lb white card stock (Stamper’s Select White from Papertrey Ink), which is a nice, sturdy card stock, but with that big of a window, the only thing that will work is using several layers.
I added white pearls from Kort & Godt to the center of the snowflakes. 3 mm pearls for the largest snowflakes, 2.5 mm pearls for all the others.
Lots and lots of Copics for this one. I used 20 markers to color just the bear, 10 for his fur alone, which is a little bit crazy.
I colored up the boy version of 
Near the top right corner, I randomly stamped part of an old background stamp from Tim Holtz and Stampers Anonymous. I thought the small text on the stamp would pair well with the newspaper in the image and stamped pieces of it at an angle with Memento Espresso Truffle ink. I didn’t even put the stamp in my Misti or on an acrylic block, I bunched it in my hand and stamped, giving it less of a rigid feel, since the stamping is uneven. I added my colored and stamped panel onto a card base made from Blueberry card stock from My Favorite Things, and a small cluster on top of my stamping.
I die cut some patterned paper scraps with a couple of dies from XCut and My Favorite Things to create my cluster. The blue piece is from Papirdesign, the other two from the Happy Birthday collection from P13. I stamped a sentiment from the Bitty Bears stamp set from My Favorite Things onto the orange banner using Hero Arts Soft Granite ink. I finished off with three enamel dots from Papirdesign and added Glossy Accents to the boy’s glasses.
Not a huge amount of colors. For the soles of his slippers I actually used the two lightest colors that I used for his hair (E31 and 30).
As usual, I printed the image on X-Press It blending card and colored it in using my Copics. Once done coloring, I took the second largest die in the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 2 set from My Favorite Things to turn it into a panel with nice faux stitching along the edges. I mounted it with foam tape onto my card base.
I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from InkyWings onto a tiny scrap of Raspberry Fizz card stock from Papertrey Ink. It was so small I barely even cut it smaller before adhering it to my card using Gina K foam tape, which isn’t as thick as the foam tape I used for my colored piece. I added some gems and sequins from the Iced Sherbet mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards, and my card was finished.
Colors. Not a lot, but some, with an added confession. I made a very similar card to this about six months back, and I’ve used the exact same colors on this one, except for one. Being a little lazy this time, I didn’t want to redo the entire graphic because of one single marker, so this graphic is one I’ve used before. The only color in there that I didn’t use for this card was E13, simply because I forgot.
I colored the image with my Copics, cut the panel down quite a bit and put lots of foam tape on the back. I dug through my patterned paper Christmas scraps and found a blue piece from Papirdesign that was large enough to cover the card front, as well as a couple of smaller pieces from Maja Design.
I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment, before die cutting it with the mid size fishtail flag frame die from My Favorite Things. I added a few snowdrift sprinkles from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards, and my card was all done. Super simple, and one more card in the Christmas 2021 box. Feels good to have the pile grow!
Nothing too fancy in my coloring today. The combo I used for the cat happens to be nearly identical to the one I used for the girl’s hair, I just omitted the darkest one.
I colored up 
I added two layers of cardstock behind my colored piece, so it would stand out a little from my Limelight card base (colored card stock from My Favorite Things).
I added some vellum clouds on tiny pieces of foam tape, so it looks like the dinosaur’s neck is really long, I thought that was a fun little detail to add. Placed some enamel dots from Papirdesign in strategic places to cover the foam tape, and made an envelope from Papirdesign patterned paper using the A2 V flap envelope dies from Simon Says Stamp for the card to go in.
Bright, bold Copics!
I wasn’t sure what to do at first, but wound up fussy cutting the image, leaving a white trim. I usually prefer cutting right up against the edge, but I didn’t want to cut off the sketchy lines on the perimeter of the image, and decided to leave the white border. I ran a piece of white card stock through my die cutting machine using a geometric embossing folder from We R Memory Keepers. It gives the background a nice texture without being too distracting from the image.
After die cutting an eyelet circle from a Cottage Cutz die set using a piece of patterned paper from DCWV, I did some aggresive cropping to one side and mounted the remainder of the circle on my dry embossed white card stock using 1 mm foam squares. I added the white panel to the card base using regular foam tape, and added the girl on top of the circle, before finishing off the card with a heat embossed sentiment from an Altenew stamp set and a few sequins from the White Orchid sequin mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards. The blue card stock is Blueberry from My Favorite Things.
Last, but not least, the colors I used for my coloring.
I colored my image onto X-Press It blending card using my Copics, before using the largest of the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX dies from My Favorite Things to turn it into a nice panel with faux stitching around the edge. I adhered it onto a card base I made from Coral Crush card stock from My Favorite Things. Sadly, the color’s discontinued, but they have loads of other gorgeous card stock colors at My Favorite Things.
I added a small cluster of scraps to the top left of my card. About half a mini doily from Doodlebug Design is at the bottom, followed by die cut pieces of patterned paper from Sunny Studio and a sentiment banner on top. I white heat embossed a sentiment from the Bitty Bears stamp set from My Favorite Things onto a banner of Peach Bellini card stock, also a discontinued MFT color.
My embellishments tend to be sequins or enamel dots centered around the sentiment on my cards. For this one, I added another two sequins in the bottom right corner, just to do something different than my standard three sequins. These sequins are from the Heaven Sent mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.
I used quite a few colors for this one. For the frosting on the pink cupcake, I also used R87, which is a color I’ve created myself.
My card is heavily inspired by a card 
Tenia’s card had a wide piece of washi tape going in from the right near the top of the card, with a rectangle perpendicular to the washi with a couple of small colored flowers on top, a sentiment and a few enamel dots. Once I’d ink blended a little bit using Audrey Blue and Island Blue inks from Simon Says Stamp, I tried to add a rectangle to my card, but it was too long and too wide for my liking. I scrapped that idea and die cut a polaroid frame instead for my little hedgehog to sit in. I used the second smallest die from the Precious Polaroids die set from My Favorite Things, and stacked four on top of each other for dimension. The die cut was just big enough to stamp a sentiment onto. The shortest sentiment in the 
I added a few snowdrift sprinkles from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards, and my card was complete. Lots of white space, a cute hedgehog and one more Christmas card in the bank for 2021. Doesn’t get much better than that!
Super limited color palette for this tiny image.
I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I’ve made another red Christmas card. I love creating Christmas cards, but I’m not a fan of red, not even for Christmas. The best thing about creating cards is that they get sent to someone else, so even if I personally don’t like certain colors, I’m getting rid of them eventually anyway, so it doesn’t matter. 😉
Once I’d colored the image with my Copics, I trimmed 1/4″ off each of the four sides and covered the back with foam tape. I found an old scrap of patterned paper from Magnolia that was already cut down to 4 1/4 x 5 1/2″, probably a reject from a previous project, but perfect for this one, the red matches my coloring! It has white “snowflakes” on it. These have 8 points, so they’re not actually snowflakes. There’s no such thing as an eight pointed snowflake (or a five pointed, for that matter), it has to do with how water molecules are formed.
I die cut a couple of scraps of Maja Design patterned paper using two of the Fishtail Flag Frames dies from My Favorite Things. I stamped and white heat embossed a sentiment from Norsk Stempelblad AS onto one of the die cut banners, adhering it to the larger one using 1 mm foam squares for a little bit of dimension. I used the same foam squares on the back of the bigger one and glued both banners to part of a mini doily from Doodlebug adhered to the top left corner of my colored panel. I added a few enamel dots from Papirdesign, and my card was done.
I found an old scrap of patterned paper from 3ndypapir that was just large enough to create an envelope from using the A2 V flap envelope dies from Simon Says Stamp. I thought the color matched the brown in my card nicely.
Not a lot of colors used for this one.
