Because Christmas birthdays need special cards

In recent years I have met so many friends with Christmas-time birthdays, and so far I am the only one who actually LIKES having a Christmas birthday!  Everyone I know says they hated it growing up because their birthday always got lost in the shuffle of Christmas activities.

I, on the other hand, was blessed with parents who went out of their way to make my birthday special like all my siblings.  We always had birthday cake and presents on Christmas night, so even though I never had a birthday party, I did not miss it!  Even now that I am ?? years old and birthdays get lost in the shuffle for a different reason, I still look forward every year to celebrating my birthday with Jesus' celebration!

That being said, now that I am making greeting cards, I have made a special effort to have something special about each December birthday for which I make a card, hence the title "Because Christmas birthdays need special cards."

I can't seem to get into the habit of photographing every card I make, but I have managed to remember to do this for several of the birthday cards I have made for friends this year.  My goal was to blend a tiny little bit of wintery, Christmasy look into flowery, glittery cards.  So here goes...

First up, snowflakes in the background with a big flower backed by various colored metallic papers.

 It is pretty difficult to get a photo of the metallic paper without that flash of light in the center, so here is another view of it:

The second card also has some snowflakes in the background, but again I used flowers and butterflies for the focal point and I really like how it turned out:

Cheer and Joy stamps

I have a new all-time favorite set of stamps that I've been using this year for Christmas cards.  I have been "captured" by one in particular from the set.  I liked it so much I almost could not stop making cards with it! 

These two cards are samples of what I have done with the "Merry" surrounded by ivy and holly.  Different background papers make a huge difference in the looks of the stamp, as does how I stamp it.  On the red and gold background card I embossed the stamp with gold embossing powder.  I also mounted the message on metallic gold card stock which added to the elegance of the card, I think. The green background was stamped with black.  To be quite honest, I can't decide which one I like better!

Let me show you and you can decide for yourself!

Trees and gears

I have a set of stamps that are very masculine-looking, with gears and trucks, trees and leaves, but I don't have a lot of occasions when I can use them even though I really like the look I get.  However, I found just the use for them when making a card this morning for a friend.  I used the current challenge sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.  This is the sketch:

and here is my take on it:

I used copper embossing powder for the tree and one set of leaves and the word is die cut from turquoise holographic paper from Paper Wishes.  They sell it as blue fireworks paper but it looks very close to turquoise and I thought it looked really good with the copper colors.

On the inside I used the birthday greeting from the same stamp set to carry through on the gears theme:

I hope our friend enjoys his birthday card!

Hearts and stripes and roses

I enjoy making cards, especially for family members, so with my sister-in-law's birthday coming up soon I wanted to find a way to make her card special.  One of my favorite things to do is to use foiled or holographic paper in some way but I am still learning how to judge the best use of them without written instructions or ideas from someone else.  But I AM learning, as I saw for myself when thinking about what to do for her birthday card.  I had some holographic pink card stock that has holographic hearts on it, so I used it as the background on her card.

Coupled with the pink striped paper it somehow works, much to my delight!

Simple elements

I needed to make several cards, so yesterday afternoon I looked in my stash of specialty papers trying to get an idea that would be different from what I've done in the past.  I found a sheet of 12 x 12 color-me paper from Paper Wishes.  It was white paper embossed with gold flowers and flourishes in one corner, the rest of the sheet covered with gold embossed dots.  Using the same basic principle for each card, I cut four pieces of the paper for the fronts of the cards, then colored just one element.

I was able to make three really totally different cards by using a different color and a different backing as you can see above.

The card on the left is backed with a gold metallic paper and used a turquoise blue for the color emphasis:

For the card on the right, I used a pretty pink backing and added the pink flower to bring out that color on the front:

Then for the middle card, a congratulations on her high school graduation, I made a card for my great niece using the colors of her school, green and gold.  I used a holographic green paper (from Paper Wishes) for the backing and for the scrolled backing on the greeting, then colored the flower with a golden yellow marker.  The holographic paper doesn't show well with my photography, but it is quite striking in person.  You can just see some of the holographic design in the circles that you can see along the edges.  I stamped the greeting inside with gold ink to carry that theme through to the inside of the card.

All in all, I like the simple elegance of this design of card.