Sweet 16 Birthday Card

This birthday card was for a "significant" birthday - our niece turned 16 last month and I wanted to make her a special card.  When I was a child, I always liked the cards that had your age on them because they were so obviously chosen especially for you.  This is one of the reasons I now enjoy making cards - everything can be personalized for the individual and the occasion.

I created this card base by welding together shapes from the Straight From the Nest cartridge.  I used Alphalicious for the "16."  I have made several cards using these corners. 

You may remember this favor box and menu card I posted in June (here is a LINK to the post about these designs).  There are many variations possible with the interesting corner images and I have a few more of these to show you in the next week or so.

This screen shot shows the keypad location of the image I used for the birthday card.  Some of the corners will work better than others so you just have to look around for the ones that suit your project.  You can also get even more creative and insert other images into the open frames.

I added layers and used two of the sentiments from the cartridge that seemed particularly appropriate for a 16th birthday.  This screen shot shows my file preview.  It is a little bit complicated so I think I will do a "guided tour" video to explain some of the techniques I used to make sure that everything will fit together properly.  I'll try to post that tomorrow - today I was a bit preoccupied with following the Imagine launch!

I cut the card base and all of the layering pieces from Core'dinations cardstock.  I used the gemstone cardstock for the base and the liners and the couture glitter cardstock for the sentiments and layers.  The large pink flower is from Creative Charms.   It was one of the items in the Deal of the Month for August.

This is a variation on some of the aperture cards I like to make - I think this style works well because there is a nice large area inside for the sentiment but you do have the open cut on the front for the "how did you do that?" impact!

You could add another liner piece to the inside front if you need a large area to add a handwritten note and don't want to write directly on the card base (or if the color of the card base is too dark for writing a message).

I added a few gems to the ends of the swirls for a little extra sparkle.

I also added a gem to highlight the head of the butterfly on the inside of the card.

Here is one more view of the card.  I am sure you can see that there are many ways to create variations of this basic design.  The card would also have a very different look if I used some printed cardstock for the layers.  I can't wait to try this sort of design on the Imagine - once we can cut and print our own designs through the Gypsy or an updated version of Design Studio.

I hope you all enjoyed finding out more about the Cricut Imagine yesterday - it was an exciting day for a lot of people.  I was interested in the comments and emails I received and surprised that many of you were able to resist temptation to jump right in and purchase now.  It sounds like there will be upgrades that will eventually make it irresistible - but that will give you time to save and analyze how this machine fits with your crafting needs.

During the Cricut Imagine Launch there were several very informative video chats with some of the people at ProvoCraft who have developed this product.  There was also a session with some of the PC designers  You can view the recordings at this LINK.

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