Happy Birthday Card Party!

One of my favorite things about having a buttload* of paper and papercrafting thingamabobs is the ability to make a card at any given time.  A birthday?  I don't hafta go to the store, I just hafta haul my lazy self to my worktable.  How do the normal people survive?!

*Actual scientific papercrafting measurement.  You don't believe me?  Ask anybody in the field.   For realz.  If you're all important and you're going to be at CHA next week, just tell anybody taking a product order that you want a BUTTLOAD of that new product.  They might even throw in something free, just for impressing them with your industry knowledge.  Trust me.

So what did I get up to last night?  Well, if you paid attention to my introduction, you'll have guessed already:  I MADE CARDS!

Two!

The first, was pretty much a failure and I hated it-  so I made a second one that I was much happier with...  but, hell,  I'ma show them both!

Here's card number one:

  See what I mean?  Simple.  Plain.  I like it- but it just looks a bit too respectable.  And generic.

I just took a piece of navy cardstock that came in one of those 'Pound O'Cardstock' from Tuesday Morning (one of the few purchases I regret) and threw it onto my newest Fiskars trimmer.  Have I told you about my trimmer addiction?  I have four.  I keep buying them.  My card base was 4X51/2.  So I cut the navy card 1/4 inch shorter on top and the side, so that it would have a nice border around it- then I threw it on top of a scalloped circle Spellbinder and rolled it through the BigKick.

I took a light blue piece of Mt. Holtz's ColorCore and stamped HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it, then tied a bow with some Dollar Tree twine.

Looks boring.

I started digging through a bowl of scraps on my table.  There's a bit of everything in that bowl.

The only thing I knew was that I wanted to use some of my brand-new Cavallini 'Vintage Office' paper tape.

I kinda began the same way- by cutting a piece of kraft cardstock and ATG'ing it to my card base.  I found the postage stamp shape in my scrap bowl.  It was, at one time, cut with my Cricut from the Elegant Edges cartridge.  I found the piece of old map cardstock in the bowl, too.  I inked and distressed its edges.  I stamped HAPPY BIRTHDAY on a leftover piece of (already stamped) manila cardstock, leftover from my last layout and cut it out.  Then I taped the stuff down using the beloved Vintage Office tape.  It looked a bit plain, still, so I added a brad from the My Mind's Eye Kraft Funday brads set- I love those damn brads.

I was staring at it, and then saw the tab, which was a scrap from the last time I cut some cardstock using Mr. Holtz's 'Tiny Tabs & Tags' die.  If you don't own this die, you're obviously not serious about life.  I stamped the file tab with a side of the Dear Lizza date stamp.  Which I bought on impulse at da HobLobs and got home and thought, "I'll never use this, it looks like crap a teenage girl would say."  And it does.  But it seemed to kinda work here- maybe in contrast with the map and brown colors... I don't know.  I like it, tho.

So there ya go.  Two cards.  I've got candy to eat, thanks to a trip to 7-11.  I'll leave you with a close-up of my new card.

-kory