Card Swap

So, because I'm insane, and have nothing else to do, I signed up for a card swap :) FOUR GROUPS. SO anyway, the swap was for birthday cards broken down into the following categories: Male, Female, Boy, Girl. So of course, I HAD to be in all four groups.

Well, after a TON of stress over the female group because I made some mistakes and didn't know how to fix it (thanks Lex!) I am NOW FINISHED with all of them. Good thing they were small groups. I would have been toast. :) Here are my groups.

Male:
I made this card using a Glimmer Screen stencil from Tattered Angels. I inked it with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Walnut Stain using a sponge. I stamped the Happy Birthday with a stamp from one of my Stampin' Up sets, inked the edges of that with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Antique Linen. I matted it on navy blue paper. I also matted the stenciled image on navy blue paper. Then I took some striped paper by The Paper Loft and inked the edges with Chestnut Roan chalk ink. I used staples to fasten the papers to each other, because I like the masculine look of them. Then, to keep the inside of the card smooth, I adhered the striped paper with regular adhesive. I love the look of staples, brads, and other things, but I don't like it when they poke through to the inside of the card itself. Anyway, I am fairly happy with how it turned out. Masculine, with deep blues and browns.

Next is my female card: Let me tell you, first off, how I stressed and freaked over this card! I am a huge perfectionist, and when things aren't perfect, I get a little freaky. Well, here is an absolutely GORGEOUS stamp by a superbly talented artist named Elisabeth Bell. This lovely little gal's name is Danni. Well, I bungled Danni's wings HORRIBLY. And my dear friend Alex, who is on a design team and sometimes works with Elisabeth's images, gave me the suggestion to use Shimmerz on her wings, so I did, and thank heavens! I feel bad that so much of the detail of her wings was lost, but before, it looked like she had clown wings, and it was very, very bad. Anyway, I could not, in good conscience, let anyone see her that way. So what I've done here is colored her with some alcohol based markers, matted the image in red and adhered the image to a navy blue speckled paper. Then, I added the velvet floral ribbon, stamped "make a wish" with a SU! stamp (I chose this because she's blowing dandelion fluff, you're supposed to wish on those before you blow, did you know that?) and then punched that out with an oval punch. I used a red Zig writer to line the border of the oval. The dandelion and it's little fluff pieces are colored with Spica (prounounced SPEE kah) which is a great little glittery pen that makes it look all sparkly and magic. :) Anyway, after all of that, I adhered everything to a white card base. There you have it.

Next up, I have my boy card.
I knew before I made it what stamp set I was going to use for this card. I have had this Basic Grey dinosaur stamp set for a while now, and have been waiting for the perfect occasion to use it. VOILA! Thanks to my friend Frank for help with the greeting. So this one, I stamped the dinosaur in Versamark, and then used chalk on a sponge to apply color to the image. It was fun, I haven't used that technique in YEARS! Then I inked the edges of the dinosaur and the greeting, and adhered them to this great striped paper. I am having a thing for stripes lately, I guess, because three of my four cards for this swap have them. :) Then I used the little half round beads and put those in each corner of the stamped image. Fun!

OK, now most of the time, I know people say to save the best for last. NOT ME. I'm saving the worst for last. Or, my least favorite. I finished this card and just am not loving it, but hopefully it won't reduce some poor little girl to tears if someone gives it to her. Anyway... it's done. Maybe I will get some super cool inspiration for it this week. Then again, maybe not. But here it is...

Okay, well, I LOVE the striped paper. And the ribbon matches the light pink stripe in it, though from this scan it doesn't look like it. The strawberry is from the SU! set Tart N Tangy, and I stamped and embossed it with red for the berry, and then with something moss or moss something for the green... I'm sorry, I really need to clean my office... I can't find the container that it's in that has the name on it. Convenient, huh? Creative people, VERY MESSY. At least this one is... But, I digress. So I pieced those pieces of the berry back together and then matted it on a black sqare (ok, rectangle?) of card stock. Then I used my printer to print out the sentiment. I used a clear Glaze pen to go over the word BERRY to make it look shiny and embossed as well. Then I matted that in black too. I used a pop dot to raise the strawberry off the front of the card a little bit. OH!!! Let me back up a second. The whole reason I wanted to make this card was because I made a bit of scratch and sniff embossing powder with some jello powder and clear embossing powder. So I was going to make the card smell wonderful, like strawberries! YEAH. Apparently you have to use sugar free jello, which I did not know. Guess what happens to sugar jello when you emboss it. Well, for those of you who do not know, embossing is done with heat. And for those of you who don't cook, heating sugar makes it carmelize. Quickly. So while I was using my embossing tool (think hair dryer) to heat this home made embossing powder, some of it blew up. Seriously, popped, burst into a tiny flame, and burned itself out. Yeah. It will be a while before I attempt to make anymore scratch N sniff cards... Anyone remember the blonde joke about the blonde making jello... well, that's sort of how I feel about my embossing powder fiasco. And now, I'd appreciate it if we wouldn't talk about it anymore. Maybe that's the real reason I dislike this card. :)