Happy Birthday Cards

Hey, Everyone!  Okay, I hope to inspire you today with some cards.  Before you decide cards aren't for you, keep in mind all of your scrapbooking stash or kits you have and no mojo...cards really are a great way to jump start your creativity.  I know not everyone is a card maker, and it wasn't until the Spring of last year, that I really started doing more cards and now love to make them.  For me, it takes as much effort to put cards together as a layout.  Sad but true.  I'm just not super fast.  I usually try to think of colors, sentiments and/or the focal point.

And speaking of focal point...I needed two birthday cards so the sentiment would be the focus.  I combined that and Diane's banner theme for this week to create both of these cards.

These two cards have similar designs using the punched scalloped borders and a banner on top of pattern paper, but I chose two different color palettes all from using the Soda Shoppe kit. 

I like pattern paper backgrounds on my cards.  I cut it at about a 1/4" inch smaller than the base card.  I assemble everything on the pattern paper background, stitching as well...and then I adhere that to the base card.

I don't have a lot of sentiment stamps, but from my stash, I had these Basic Grey stamps from the Clippings collection.  I cannot cut a pretty circle by hand, especially one this small...so I cut these teeny tiny pinking circles with the Silhouette, and then stamped the letters...stitched them together and adhered.  The pinwheels are the Jenni Bowlin pinwheel punch.

I love the tone on tone of the scallops.  I added a little cluster at the bottom just to ground the design a little more.

And here is the next card...the scallops are at the bottom and in three different colors.  

 I found this "Happy Birthday" sentiment to stamp from my stash and worked perfectly above the scallops.  Added a small cluster to help ground the design more.

 I don't think I will ever tire of butterflies...they helped create movement on the card and bring your eye across the entire card.

So if you are not a card maker, I hope this inspires you to hopefully give cards a try and put those products to good use...and if not, apply these designs to a layout.