Gettin' Crafty This Past Weekend!

I know it's been a while since I've had a real, true crafty post and for that I'm sorry. To be honest, somewhere along the way I lost my mojo. I'd clean up my craft area (always a mess) and set to work on some great idea I had that day.

Most of the time, I'd just sit and stare at ideas and inspiration I found on Pinterest or had sketched out on paper. And I'd sit and stare some more....and even a little more for good measure. Shortly after that I'd throw in the towel and do laundry, play a computer game or continue on my job search.

This weekend was different! I actually made three cards! I credit this miraculous spurt of creativity to receiving the Close to my Heart Art Philosophy Collection. I won it in a drawing on Jayma Malme's blog Playing with Paper. Thanks Jayma if you're reading this! It's full of great cuts and amazing coordinating stamps and more goodness than I can ever hope to write about in a blog post of a decent length. It really helped inspire several new cards.

This card was as fun to make as it looks (well as it looks to me at least!). Somewhere along the way I had seen a layout on a square card that used squares behind a center image. Because my cards are A2 sized, and I really like working with that size and shape, I decided to change the squares in the inspiration to rectangles.

It might be a little hard to see, but there the same cupcake used as the focal point is stamped as a watermark on the light pink rectangles. I didn't have any patterned paper I felt matched or went well enough with this, so I essentially made my own. Looking back, I may also have taken a bunch of different cupcakes and stamped and/or embossed them in different ways to create a similar look, or the look of a purchased patterned paper.

The focal cupcake is embossed with clear glitter, adding a touch of sparkle to the card. As you probably know if you've been reading very many of my crafty posts, I love glitter. I hate when it gets all over though. I really feel like this is a great solution for glitter getting everywhere. For the most part, once the image is stamped and covered in the embossing powder, the loose glitter stops there. After it's been heated, melted and dried, the glitter is in there and it isn't budging.

"Happy Birthday" is embossed in silver to give a pop of something other than pink.

As always, this card is available for purchase in my Etsy store. To get to this card, click here or on the Etsy Store tab above to get check out the whole shop.

Thank you!