2 50th Birthday cards and a NOT 50th birthday card

One day I got a phone call from a friend of mine telling me he had a meeting with a business mentor. During this meeting he was discussing a plan of attack for a new business venture, somehow my name and my card making abilities came up. This woman told my friend that she had a couple of very special friends who were turning 50 in the following couple of weeks and she had been looking for nice cards but had no luck finding what she wanted.

So Josh called me and gave me the story and her email address. I wrote a quick email introducing myself and asking her to tell me what she was looking for.

She wanted something gold and blingy with the birthday girls names on them. Normally, I don't do blingy, just too tizzy for me, but I struck a happy medium with these two.

I adore, adore, adore shaker cards and felt this was a perfect opportunity to make a special one.

I did this on creamy (although it looks white here) Bazzil cardstock.











I first figured out how to print the name on the front of the cardstock using Publisher and my laser printer. When I finally got that right...

I used an aquwash brush to "cut" a square from some silk paper, then I frayed it up a bit.

I then printed out a big 50 on copy paper and cut it out making a template, then traced it onto another piece of cardstock. I thought it looked a bit plain so I found a curly q stamp and used Gold Brilliance ink to do a bit of stamping, and I also applied the stamp pad directly to the edges.

Next, I attached a piece of acetate on the back of that, then the foam tape. I left a bit open at the top, folded a piece of copy paper into a funnel and carefully poured the seed beads in before removing the tape backing to seal the whole thing shut. One last thing I did before sealing it, just for something extra special, I added a tiny dark pink metallic heart in with the beads... which promptly got stuck under a piece of tape. Hmph.

I sat and played with this card for a while, very theraputic.

The next one was done on the same type and colour of cardstock...

but only this time I found this really cool ribbon type stuff that's a lot stiffer than normal ribbon. You can see that it's mounted on the left side of the card.

I dotted Dimensional Magic to the back of this ribbon stuff very carefully so it wouldn't come through the holes and look all shiny.

The gold beads are on a string and again are attached with Dimensional Magic.

The 50 is the same 50 I used on that other card. (killed two 50's with one template!) I did the next step kinda backwards, but in the end it turned out. I first traced it onto some foam core board then cut it out with my x-acto knife (gotta love those things!) I found my last sheet of Jac paper and put the numbers face down on it and traced around them, then cut the Jac paper, peeled off one side and attached it to the foam core numbers. Then I flipped them over again onto the back of this beautiful gold Japanese paper and traced them again. I removed the other backing from the Jac paper and carefully attached the Japanese paper. Yeah, in some places it wasn't perfect, but the next step took care of that. I took my trusty dusty nail file and gently filed down the paper so it both aged the edges and made them all uniform. In the end they looked professionally made.

I attached them with just regular double sided tape. The card was also printed the same time the first one was.

And who could forget the liner?!

The copy paper I used for the liner, matched the cardstock perfectly, and I just used my Fiskars edger to make this pretty leafy edge.

The last card I made was for someone very special.

You can see the cardstock is the same creamy Bazzil, I used the same cool ribbon stuff.

I found a nice piece of black ribbed cardstock (I really love this textured stuff).

The stamp is one that I brough back from the US in May. I used my Marvy Markers to colour the bits the colours I wanted, and stamped it on some cream shimmer card. I then found some tiny little pink gems and attached them with my old friend Dimensional Magic. It's attached with foam tape.

As you can see, I love my leafy Fiskars punch! I just did the front of the card.