May PTI blog hop

Yesterday, I showed you the set of cards I made for Thomas' teachers on his last day of preschool.

But his main teacher deserved a little special attention.  I was inspired by the PTI blog hop photo:

When I saw that fancy place setting, I immediately thought of the fancy treat that might be served on one of those plates.  Actually, I thought the cupcake card would make a cute place-card, with the person's name written on the hanging tag instead of "merci"... but that's for another day :)  I needed a french thank you card right now.

In addition to the card, I made a gift-card holder using the Clear and Simple Stamps "mini tri-fold 1" die.  (It's larger than the PTI lunchbox note and the giftcard holder, in case you're wondering.)  I thought it would be fun to decorate it to match the main card.  The cupcake wrapper, the same swirl of frosting - we're seeing a cupcake here, right?

(When we delivered the present yesterday, there was a gift-card in there, I promise...just showing my level of procrastination again here... hee!)

Here's the set.  For both, I stamped the cupcake wrappers with PTI's gingham background in black, and stamped flowers from "in bloom" onto some scraps of lime green paper (I know it's SU papers, and I think the color is kiwi kiss.)  The "frosting" was embossed with an SU folder and sprayed with a studio calico shine mist.

I wanted the flowers at the top to look like whimsical, edible flowers, so I cut in between the petals and curled the blooms a bit.  That made all the difference in giving the card some movement.

Hope you like my set - and I hope Thomas' teacher was a bit wowed too :)

Thanks for hopping over here - have a great weekend!

it's a girl!

A little breather before I show you the next round of Christmas cards for upcoming classes...  and truth be told, this was a very welcome break...

My friend asked if I could create a card for a baby shower, for a baby girl.  A day later, I was asked to create all the paper-decor for this shower!  Chantalle, you will have the match-iest card of the party ;)

I used PTI's cupcake die to create the shaped card, and accented the top with a swirl of pink icing.  I added some glitter accents with SU's new dazzling details - it's like a glitter-glue with a really fine tip.  I'm pretty sure it's just like the stuff my daughter uses, except it has a very fine tip that makes me feel like I'm that much more of an adult artist....

I used the PTI linen impression plate to add a subtle texture to the white of the cupcake.

The sentiment (from lawn fawn's "plus one") was stamped onto white cardstock.  I stamped the banner (from lawn fawn's "bannerific") and added a pink stamped layer of SU's "A to Z."  The banner then got the snip-and-stick treatment, onto the cupcake base.

Thanks for looking!

MIM #10

Where do you derive inspiration for your papercrafting?  Or for your general craftiness?  I find mine in the weirdest places... 

This week's MIM challenge was to mask using your die-cuts.  I die-cut the cupcake you see above, and then used the negative space to sponge in my colors.  I sponged the entire space in SU's crumb cake ink and then created another mask that allowed me to sponge fresh snow ink at the top for the "icing" and SU's early espresso ink for the "wrapper" at the bottom.  I wanted the wrapper to stand out, so I also stamped it using text-style II.

Here's my inspiration photo:

Doesn't it look yummy?  That icing is calling my name, begging me to eat salads all day so I could fit it in to my daily WW points, lol!

When I sponged white ink onto my cupcake, it wasn't looking enough like that yummy icing.... so I busted out my liquid applique (who uses that anymore? ha!) and painted over the top to make it pop.  And, for good measure, I added some chocolate chip sprinkles.  Because, according to my kids, everything is better with chocolate chip sprinkles...

Everything else is pretty straightforward.  I stamped a row from polka dot basics II in SU's cherry cobbler, and another row in daffodil delight.  The little "eat cake" sentiment is from Tiny treats: birthday and was stamped in baja breeze.  Everything was sponged to tie it together, even the embossed polka-dots on the card base.  For a final touch - a little baker's twine.

Thanks for looking!