BIRTHDAY CUPCAKE CARD

Hello! Recently a good friend of mine gave me a little gift of bright striped cardstock and swirly vellum paper, and I've used it in today's card - thank you Karen L. for me inspiring to create this card! There's a lot going on here ... stamped background, Perfect Pearls, shadow stamping on vellum paper, sponging, Stickles glitter glue ... so lets get started!

The background was made by cutting both the plain pink & striped cardstock to 4" x 5 1/4". Stamp your cupcake image in black on the upper left portion of the pink CS. Next, cut the striped CS in half diagonally (on your paper cutter, place the top left corner AND the bottom right corner on your cutting line & cut) then attached to pink CS as shown. Set aside.

Time for shadow stamping! Cut vellum to 3 1/2" x 4 3/4". In the upper left corner, stamp "celebrate" with VersaMark. Apply Perfect Pearls lightly with brush, flick off excess (see post on Perfect Pearls from 2/23/16 for tips). Next stamp "celebrate" in Brilliance Graphite Black ink ALMOST over the Perfect Pearls "celebrate", but move stamp ever so slightly up & to the left! What you should see now is the word "celebrate" in black with a shimmering gold shadow underneath & to the right! Tip: If you've never created shadows with text/phrase stamps before, practice first with two different color inks, such as pink and black, on white scrap paper first! Don't use your expensive vellum til you've got the hang of it!

Now, shadow stamp the phrase "birthday wishes" in the lower right corner. Use Brilliance Gold first, let dry a few minutes. (Tip: I prefer to stamp on vellum with Brilliance ink - it dries very quickly, as compared to other inks - dye inks take a bit longer to dry on vellum and images smudge easily before drying completely.) When dry, stamp "birthday wishes" with Brilliance Black ink ALMOST over the gold "birthday wishes", but move stamp ever so slightly up & to the left! Again, what you should see is the phrase "birthday wishes" in black with a light gold shadow underneath & to the right!

Cut a piece of white blending CS to fit your cupcake image (1 1/2" by 2 1/4" for mine above). Stamp cupcake image on this with Memento black ink pad. Color in image with your choice of alcohol markers (I used Spectrum Noir Markers). Sponge Brilliance Galaxy Gold Ink around all 4 edges and in toward center lightly, leaving just a bit of white around cupcake. Then sponge with pink ink around the edges only.

Now we attach our colored image to center of the vellum - I used a tape runner, easy-peasy! The tricky part here will be attaching the vellum to the pink/striped background we made earlier. You see, vellum is translucent , and if you use glue or tape to attach it to the background, it will show through and completely spoil all your beautiful work - in short - IT WILL LOOK UGLY! So the trick is to use brads or eyelets to attach it, as shown in the upper left & lower right corners! OR - you could use tape, glue or glue dots to attach it - you just need to cover, or mask, where the tape/glue shows through - as you see in the upper right & lower left corners - a tiny glue dot to attach vellum to background UNDERNEATH & a pretty turquoise rhinestone covering the glue dot on top!!!

The last step is to attach the card front to a white A2 card! Add a little Icicle Stickles glitter glue to the cupcake for added zing and set aside to dry! Tada! It's finished. I hope you had fun reading this and, as always, I hope I've helped to inspire your creativity today! Happy creating & smiles, Laura