Double Birthday - a little late...

I suddenly realized that I had missed sending cards for a significant family birthday - our twin niece and nephew turned twelve this month and I wished them Happy Birthday when we saw them just before their birthday but then totally forgot to send cards!  So, these cards will be late - I hope they will like them (along with the "flat" presents inside!).

The inspiration for our nephew's card was this leftover piece of blue mirror cardstock. (I cut the accent stars for the card yesterday from this and the negative space looked rather interesting - sort of modern and space-age...).  I had a piece of the green shimmer cardstock left as well, so I started with those two pieces.  I rounded all of the corners on the green cardstock and decided to round just two corners on the blue piece.  I added an extra piece of white cardstock to the back of the blue layer so that only white would show through the openings.

I happened to have an extra "Happy Birthday" cut from Lyrical Letters in my "leftovers" box.  I thought the star shape was very similar and would be great for the inside of the card.  I had misplaced the dot for the "i" but a tiny green gem fills in very nicely.  To make things coordinate, I wanted to cut his name using the same font on Lyrical Letters (the "Connected" font).

The first time I cut the name I used this bronze metallic cardstock but it was too dull and the card did not balance nicely.

I looked around and found this pack of foil cardstock I bought a while ago - there are two types of texture in this, one is ribbed and the other more of a woven effect.  There was a nice orange/copper color so I chose that to coordinate with the orange "Happy Birthday" inside.

I welded the name and then adjusted the size to 3.5 inches long and 1.5 inches high.  As you can see, this is very small and the upstrokes in some of the letters are very thin.  You have to be extremely careful in lifting a cut like this from the mat.

It was very difficult to get a photo with the shine on both the blue and orange cardstock showing.  I hope you can get an idea of the effect from this photo.  Since I had already adhered the bronze name I simply layered the shinier orange one right on top.  This actually gives a nice raised effect.

For our niece's card I wanted to use this piece of glitter cardstock with cupcakes.  It was left from a larger piece in the DCWV Sweet Stack that I use quite a while ago for a project.  I used the Core'dinations gemstone cardstock again for the pink layer.  Since I knew that my cupcake layer would cover some of the pink gemstone cardstock, I punched out a few flowers that I can use on another project.

I added some bright green dotted ribbon, first wrapping a piece around the layers before adhering to the card and then tying a bow and attaching it with glue dots.

I added her initial cut from the Storybook cartridge at 1.5 inch in a deeper pink shimmer cardstock.

I also cut the "Birthday Girl" from the Storybook cartridge for the inside of the card in the same deep pink shimmer cardstock.  The dot for the "i" is connected to the "t" but I added a tiny diamond to accent it.

 Lyrical Letters and Storybook are two of my favorite cartridges - I very often can find just what I need for a quick card on one of them.


A small bit of enabling - I just got the sale flyer for Jo-Ann's in the mail today and Cricut cartridges are $39.99 each from April 1 -3.  Also, cardstock is on sale at 5 for $1 on the same dates so here is a chance to stock up on the Core'dinations Gemstone cardstock