Enjoy (Birthday)

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I made this card for a friend's 30th birthday. I wanted something that went with the theme (well, my theme) for the night- my husband & I gave the birthday boy Guinness and home brewed beer as a gift and I'd made a delicious Guinness cake for the party. Thus, the beer on the card.

The Guinness itself was paper pieced. I cut out the beer and the foam first, and then used an Overhead (clear plastic sheets) to cut out the pint glass- and yes, I cut out two pieces (one for the back and one for the front) to make it more authentic.

After I put the pint together, I stamped the sentiment and went over it with a gel pen. I cut out the piece of paper to make it look like it was curved along the glass. Then I attached a ribbon to the sentiment using brads, and put the ribbon around the pint. The pint is raised off the paper using pop dots.

Finally, I stamped "30" in the upper left corner with Versamark and rounded my edges with a paper punch.

Too Cute

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Another Baby card for another couple who is expecting. This time I knew it was a boy, so I felt more comfortable opting for a blue palette.

Tigger is cut using my Cricut. The sentiment is stamped and then gone over with a sparkly gel pen. Finally I added brads to the top, to draw the eye to the sentiment.

Piece of Cake

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My 2 year wedding anniversary was last week. Woo! I got my husband two tickets to see the New England Revolution in September. I didn't want to put the tickets in his card and I didn't have a box laying around the house that was small enough.

I used my Cricut to cut out the cake shaped box from Tags, Bags, Boxes & More. I cut it out as big as I could (given that I only have the original Cricut it was 5.5").

I was already planning to add a strip along the side of the cake to give the appearance of frosting in between layers, and coloring the top and back of the cake as well. In the end, I coated the frosting stripe in UTEE so that it would look shiny, and more like a ganache than a frosting. To top the cake I took tiny pieces of paper that I had torn up, and glued them on- to give the appearance of a chocolate shaving topping.

My husband had no idea what was in the box- and didn't even want to open it. It's still sitting at home (opened, very carefully) on display.

Faux iPhone

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I spent a lot of time trying to get this one right. My husband's birthday was this past week and he'd been eying the iPhone for quite a while. Even though I'd decided to get him one, I knew he would have questions and I thought it would be better to have him there so he could also pick out a case.

I still wanted to give him something tangible to open- because unwrapping gifts is fun- so I decided to paper piece this faux iPhone.

I used my Cricut to cut out the phone base and all the squares for the icons. The hardest part was adding the detail to the icons. I was working off of this image. Given the size of the small squares and the pen tips, I think it came out pretty well.

Once we went and picked up the real phone, I compared the two. I was missing an icon square (it wasn't shown in the picture I used as a reference), and the proportions weren't exactly on. Overall, I think I did a great job.

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

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My husband is involved in a Community Theater in our area. He's currently playing Linus in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and this is his third production with the company. Unfortunately, I was out of town this past weekend when his show opened.

Since I couldn't be there in person, I decided to send a few "surprises" to the cast to wish them a great opening. I made cookies for the cast and director (each cast member got 4 vanilla cookies with sprinkles in a "character" color) and to go with the casts' cookies I made little post cards. The post cards had their characters on them as well as a quote from the show.

I also wanted to make a sign, because I knew that would last longer than the cookies. When my husband did his first show at the theater (Music Man), I made a hand written sign. This time, I wanted to do something a little cuter and a little more personal.

I decided to paper piece together each of the characters in the show. I used the Peanuts website as a reference. I cut out all of the characters in one solid color (peach for the people, white for Snoopy). I then cut out the clothes and other accesories. Once all of my pieces were cut out, I assembled them.

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They definitely looked a little creepy without any outlines and markings on them. I wanted to be sure that I got the outlines and markings as close as possible to what the actual cartoons look like. I used a pencil first for some of the markings- typically the faces and on Snoopy his ears. After that, I finalized the pieces by going over the pencil with a gel pen, and I made the "outer" outline using a black marker.

They don't look identical to what Charles Schulz drew, but I don't think they should. I think they turned out quite nicely, and the cast loved the sign.

Guitar Hero Congratulations

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This is a wedding card I made recently for a very unique couple. As a gift, a group of us gave them Guitar Hero II and an extra controller. I decided to make the card in the same theme as the gifts.

I paper pieced the two guitars together. The red piece was cut seperately from the black piece (neck of the guitar) and the individual buttons at the top (red, green, etc- just like on a real controller) were cut out seperately as well.

After piecing them together, I used gel pens for the whammy bar, strum button, and the start/select buttons. I used used one to give the guitar the illusion of having frets- which don't show up at all in the picture.

The sentiment inside the card reads, "Now you can Rock 'n Roll all night and party every day!"