Celebrating Lots of Birthdays!

Aloha, all!

     Have I mentioned our plans to travel away from home for pretty much the entire month of June? Well, so far that's our plan. And with June just a few days away, I hope it works out. Crossing fingers and toes that hubby's current medical issues allow this to happen.

     But in any case, I have a ton of birthday cards to send out in June, and I won't have much (any?) time to do any paper crafting while I'm away. So I need to get these birthday cards made and ready to go into the mail in somehwat of an appropriate time frame. Our house/pet sitter has agreed to do this for me. But, even though she's thinking about signing up as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator, she declines to make the cards for me. So that's up to me.  So here's my first batch of really quickie cards!

     If you recognize the papers in this first set of cards for the day, you'll know they're from the March 2016 Paper Pumpkin kit. I shared a couple of cards that I made with this kit when I first got it. That kit was full of smallish cards to make – gift card inserts was the theme. But I rarely send gift cards, so I needed to make full A2-sized cards, and I did that with most of the kit. I stuck the leftovers on a shelf and forgot about them.  Until today.

     I was about to get out some other papers when I spied the box on the shelf and wondered, "what's in that?" When I saw all the leftovers, I went right to work. I made 2 each of 3 designs, and here's where I came up with each of the 3 designs.  Note that, for all of them, I used Bermuda Bay Thick Baker's Twine to tie the designs together.

 The first card is made almost entirely with products from the kit. The square behind the greeting was a punch-out from the kit, and I cut a smaller square of Whisper White Cardstock to place on top of it. I used a stamp from the Tin of Cards Stamp Set which seemed to fit very nicely with this square. The two banners on the bottom left are also from the kit and placed as one of the kit samples had them placed. After tying on the Baker's Twine, I adhered this whole group to a card base that was one of the last two I had in the kit (I used the other card for the duplicate of this one). Then I punched a piece of Bermuda Bay Cardstock using the smallest flower in the Boho Blossoms Punch, and added one of the Candy Dots from the kit.

 

I based the second card on one of the business-card sized pieces in the kit. It was the front of a folded card. The Bermuda Bay Cardstock thin mat around it was not from the kit. The printed border, green liner inside the print and the white center were all on the original mini card. I stamped the greeting from the Watercolor Wishes Stamp Set. I mounted this with Stampin' Dimensionals over left side strips made with a rectangle cut from the envelope paper in the kit, and a striped cardstock strip also from the kit, but cut to size.

 

Both this card and the previous one had card bases made with Whisper White Thick Cardstock. For this last card, I used the same papers as a background as in the previous card, but I cut them to different sizes, tying the Baker's Twine around the two pieces which I'd adhered together before adhering it all to the card base.  The Bermuda Bay banner at the bottom is a self-adhesive die-cut piece from the kit. You can see the whole piece and how this card is laid out in the main photo, top, center. Again, I used the sentiment from the Watercolor Wishes Stamp Set, centering it at the bottom of the card.

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I love Paper Pumpkin kits – there's always so much you can do with them!  I also love that I can stop the kits from coming at times, like June!, when I'm going to be away and won't have time to play with them. If you'd like to know more about Stampin' Up!'s Paper Pumpkin, just go to the Paper Pumpkin website. Let me know if you have any questions!

     One of the reasons I added some photos to this blog post, besides the fact that they do help show you how I made the cards, is that this post is part of a blog hop for a summer online group to which I belong. It's a fun group of people who like Stampin' Up! products – some of are demonstrators, but most are not. If you'd be interested in joining, let me know this weekend and I'll send you the information you need to join. Sign up deadline for this year is May 31st, but there's not much to be done before being accepted in the group.