CAS-ual Birthday Cards for Every Member of the Family

Hi, everyone!

The CAS-ual Fridays challenge for the next two weeks is birthday themed to celebrate Michele's birthday. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to play with some new toys: a cupcake punch and sponge daubers from Stampin' Up! and Nestabilities scallop dies from Spellbinders.

Two Cards in One?
For supplies, please see cards below.

The card at the right was my first attempt. All in all, it's good a little card. Hubby liked it with the exception of the candle on the cupcake. However, there was something about it that was bothering me. Then came my epiphany: This card was two cards in one. Both the circles and the cupcake were whimsical, but the circles felt more abstract and dreamy than the cupcake.

So, I made two cards, each inspired by the disparate images of the first card.

For Mom or Big Sis

watercolor paper washed in watered-down Warm White acrylic; Bazzill black
circles: Distress Ink peeled paint, dusty concord, and tumbled glass, sponged on using SU daubers
circle and hole punches from EK and Marvy
Mark Richards rhinestones

I apologize that this is such a rudimentary image. (There were lots of technical difficulties -- really struggled to get a photo that did justice to the colors.) Regardless, I LOVE this card -- love, love, love it. This is up there with one of my all-time favorites.

Bernadette Kirk taught the technique of punching out templates and using the templates to sponge on images at a recent Stampin' Up class. Think I'm going to be using this idea lots more. Thanks, Bernadette!

For Little Sis

watercolor paper washed in watered-down Warm Water acrylic; pattern: Distress Ink Scattered Straw on bubblewrap
Distress Ink core paper; Stampin' Up! cupcake punch and Tangerine Tango ribbon;
Recollections  stickers; Spellbinders Nestabilities scallops, EK hole punch

This just feels like a bright, cheery,  fun card perfect for the little girl in the family.

For Dad or Brother

After experimenting with sponging on Distress Inks, I decided to try it out with the SU honeycomb embossing folder and went with a masculine palette. For this card, I embossed an index card and cut out hexagons to create sponging templates.

Stampin' Up! (Sizzix) embossing folder, heat embossed with Distress Ink black soot
cardstock: Bazzill black; AC white, sponged in antique linen
hexagons sponged in Distress Ink (vintage photo, antique linen, tumbled glass, peeled paint, dusty concord)
computer-generated sentiment (Mistral)

Not a  bad first effort. Think this could take on lots of different looks with different palettes and fonts.

Parting Thought

Thanks for stopping. Have a great week and happy scrappin'!