Charlie's Cards (a little later than planned - sorry)

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all well and looking forward to another crafty (or non-crafty) weekend. This post is a little later than promised, I'm not sure where this week's gone again.

I made two cards for Charlie - the first card was loosely based on one my sister shared with me on Facebook months ago, I couldn't actually find the photo of the card but had sort of an idea what it looked like.

This isn't the easiest card to photograph as it's mostly black on black. I stuck Sizzix number dies onto a piece of Centura Pearl card stock in a random pattern using washi tape and ran it through my Big Shot using a metal Precision adapter plate to ensure a crisp clean cut first time, then moved some of the numbers on the card while leaving a couple off. I made sure I kept the negative pieces of the numbers as I wanted to make a feature of the negative numbers rather than the die cut positive numbers. Once I had all the numbers I wanted cut out I added pieces of foam tape to the back of the card making sure I used plenty near but not covering the negative number spaces. I added a small scrap of pink holographic card to the 18, flipped the card over and added the interior negative pieces so the 8 was complete using small pieces of foam tape. I added some d/s tape to the back of the 18 and added the entire panel to another piece of black card stock. I added all the saved negative diecuts inside of the relative numbers as shown using more foam tape. I wanted to add some white splatters just to make the card a little more interesting so mixed a small quantity of Tonic Nuvo white acrylic paint with some DoCrafts white shimmer spray on a spare piece of acetate and flicked it onto the card front using a paint brush. I ended up with two large drops so dabbed them up using a piece of kitchen paper and it left a galaxy sort of pattern near the 18 which I rather liked. I added to the spacey feel by adding dots of white gel pen and Sakura Clear Stardust gel pen randomly to the card. It would have been a good idea to have added the Happy Birthday sentiment before I added any foam tape to the piece but luckily it was stable enough for me to stamp onto it using Versamark clear ink and then heat embossing using a detail white embossing powder. Once I was happy with the front panel, I added it to a card blank. Although this was made for a young lady it would be very easy to change it for a young man just by swapping the pink card under the 18 for another colour - you could also easily change the age for a different significant birthday.

The second card is one of my beloved pop up box cards and I loved making the last one so much that I decided to make a similar one using different star dies.

The card base was made using Centura Pearl black card stock which is black on one side and white on the other which is why the top flaps of the box card are white while the box parts are black. I die cut the star shapes out of the black card, pink holographic and silver mirror card and the 18s were also die cut out of the pink holographic card. This card was extra large so I had to make a custom envelope for it using my WRMK Envelope Punch Board and a sheet of 12" x 12" paper (punched and scored at 4 1/2 ")  I really liked making this card and it certainly has that wow factor.

I've made these box cards loads of times so there are instructions somewhere on this blog. If you can't find them then please leave a comment below and I'd be delighted to write them out again. I've a card to make for one of my other niece's Isobel who will be celebrating her 2nd birthday on Thursday. I'm considering making a rocker card with balloons floating above using acetate but nothing's definite at this point. I hope you've enjoying seeing my (sort of) latest creations, I had a lot of fun making them and they seemed to go down well last Sunday. It was really wonderful to share Charlie's special birthday and it was fantastic to see my sister's family and spend some quality time with them.

I hope you all have a brilliant weekend and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx