Birthday Floral Pop-Up Card

Stampin' Up! has great card stock. It holds its color better and is stronger than the regular card stock you find at big box craft store. There are over 60 colors of card stock that coordinate with ink, ribbon, and other accessories. You have the classic 48 colors grouped into 4 color families, 7 neutrals, and 6 In-Colors that change each year.

In addition to all these, Stampin' Up! also offers other specialty cardstock. So this card features Shimmery White card stock, and this is the first time I've used it. One of my friends used some on her card, and it looked absolutley fabulous. It's very glossy on one side, almost like photo paper, and is flat (as in not shiny) on the other. (See how shiny it is in the picture.)

So here's the card without the glare. Yes, it's for another family birthday: for a special person, my twin sister. She's classy, so I decided to use the simple elegance of the flowers from Fifth Avenue Floral and couple it with the Shimmery White card stock. The outside looks pretty simple, but the inside has a surprise!

It pops up! As I was browsing blogs, I saw a tutorial for pop-up cards and could hardly wait to make a card using this technique.

Here's a closer look. Contact me to learn even more techniques or how to get some specialty card stock for your next project.

Stamp Sets: Fifth Avenue Floral, Teeny Tiny Greetings
Materials: Brocade Blue card stock and coordinating ribbon, Whisper White card stock, Crystal Effects (for the center of the flower), and the Word Window punch (for the greeting and for the pop-up effect)

Butterfly Birthday Card

In my family August has always been a busy birthday month. In the past decade my family has grown through marriages and births, and now there are even more birthdays in August! There's almost a week straight at the end of August-beginning of September that's chock full of birthdays (almost one per day)! Anyway, it's a lot of fun. So, I'd like to share some of the birthday cards I enjoyed making for some special people in my life.

I wanted to play with some new things I got things I got this summer: Melon Mambo-the new, bright pink In-Color, the Beautiful Butterflies die, Texturz Plates, Frost Shimmer Paint, and Build-a-brads. I made it for someone who loves pink and has dressed up as a butterfly for Halloween.

It was fun and easy to use the Big-Shot to add texture to the card stock and then cut out a beautiful image. You can do it too. You'll use the Stampin' Up! Backgrounds 1 Texturz plate to make the swirly background on the butterfly. Actually you get six textures to work from in that set, so you have a lot of possibilities to explore. Then you'll layer the texturized card stock on the Beautiful Butterflies die and run it through the Big-Shot again. If you want to see how, then email me, and I'll be happy to show you!


I added Frost Shimmer Paint to the butterfly with a sponge, to make it stand out from the rest of the card stock. The body of the butterfly (and the greeting) were punched from the word window punch. The greeting comes from a wonderfully versatile set called Teeny Tiny Wishes; it has something for just about every occasion. The flowers are from the Fifth Avenue Floral stamp set.

It's easy to personalize cards with the Build-a-brads. Oh, and you can also use Stampin' Up! markers to color ribbon so that it matches the card stock. Enjoy!

Elegant Thank You Notes

Here are some cards (full-size and note cards) that I want to share with you. I was just playing around with the Medallion Background Stamp and Mellow Moss, and this is what I came up with. I hadn't worked with this shade of green before (surprisingly), but it was a lot of fun.

The Frost Shimmer Paint gives the card an even more elegant appearance. The sheen of the taffeta ribbon and the shimmer paint complement each other well. The tag is from the die set and cut with the Big Shot.

I think these could be used for every day thank you cards, but they're fancy enough for wedding thank you notes.

Let me know if you'd like to order a set of 10 or 20 of them.

I put together a little folder to hold these notecards.