Glittering Birthday Bear and Friends

Hello everyone, it’s Karen here today.  I’m back with another card made using the adorable Birthday Bear stamp set.

If you would like to see a video of how I made this card, please CLICK HERE

or you can see it in lower resolution here:

I copic coloured my images first (the marker colours used are listed below), and applied glossy accents to the banners, birthday hat, and the balloon. I set these aside to dry. 

I cut a background cover die from Sunny Studios called Frilly Frames Retro Petals out of #110 white cardstock (you could use any cover die with openings in it).  I saved the small die cut petals to later fill back in to the openings. I covered the back of my die cut frame with DieCut’N Bond which is a double sided adhesive. You could probably use any strong double sided adhesive such as Stick It for this technique. On the front of my frame, I filled in most of the openings with the saved petals, to make a pleasing pattern. The unfilled areas were mostly in areas where they would be seen behind the Birthday Bear characters. 

I found micro glitter at my dollar store (as well as containers to store it in), but any micro glitter would work. I’m not sure if chunky glitter would stick in this technique. I masked off all the petals but one, and carefully applied a small amount of glitter to my first petal and rubbed it in with my finger, slightly pressing it down. Then I used a bone folder to really press the glitter to the adhesive. I used a Swiffer cloth to wipe up the excess as well as a brush. This is quite a messy technique, so I also keep a sheet of printer paper beneath my work. I continued filling in all the petals, using a different colour for each one. This is such a fun, sparkly background in real life and just perfect for a birthday party theme. If you didn’t want to do the glitter technique, the background openings could be filled with alcohol ink pieces, copic or watercolour pieces or even patterned paper. Lots of possibilities! 

For the sentiment, I die cut a border using a Sunny Studio Heartstrings border die which I thought coordinated well with the petals. I stamped the “Happy Birthday” sentiment from the stamp set and clear heat embossed it. I trimmed it down to just cover the bottom of my frame and mounted it on foam adhesive. I applied foam adhesive to the back of my images as well, and then mounted them along the border sentiment. 

On the inside of the card, I stamped the sentiment from the Birthday Bear stamp set and added that super sweet bear arm with the balloon. I love that arm! 

This is a really fun birthday card with a very festive, party feel to it and I hope you’ll give it a try! 

Copic Markers used:

BEAR - E79, E59, E57, E35, E53, E51 R00, R20

BUNNY - W1, W2, W3, E40, R00, R20

BANNERS - RV04, BG13, Y17, YG03, Y08

BALLOON - YG67, YG17, YG03

Simon Says Stamp “Fern Square” card

Hello everyone, I’m so glad to be back in my craft room after an incredibly busy December. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that the New Year has started off well for you!  I’ve got a couple of cards today that feature the Fern Square die from Simon Says Stamp. This is such a pretty die that I really wanted to make a whole card out of it.

If you would like to see an HD video of how I made this card, please click HERE.

I started by die cutting 3 - 4 of the Fern squares out of cardstock. These were to be my stencils so I taped the open end of the negative die cut with masking tape to help keep the stencil together. 

On my card front, I ink blended the stencil repeatedly with Peacock Feathers Distress Oxide ink in a random pattern across the whole card front. The next step was to use the stencil to apply Moda Scrap Gelly paste over the inked ferns on one card. On the second card, I applied Nuvo Glimmer paste in Moonstone over the ferns. I set these aside to dry. 

Then I applied a strip of Die Cut’N Bond double sided adhesive to a piece of cardstock. From this, I die cut another Fern Square and saved both the positive and the negative images. I stacked 4 of the positive die cuts together (I already had that many cut from making the stencils). With the negative die cut, I removed the adhesive backing and sprinkled micro-glitter all over it. I used my finger to push the glitter into the adhesive and then used my bone folder to finish pressing it in. 

I repeated this same process with my word dies. I die cut the Thanks from Simon Says Stamp’s (SSS) “Script Thanks” die from the adhesive backed cardstock. The background cloud die was cut from regular white cardstock. For the birthday card, I die cut the “Happy” with an Impression Obsessions die from the adhesive backed paper. I used the die itself to trace around and fussy cut out of white cardstock to make the cloud outline. I then removed the adhesive backing from the words and applied glitter to them, making sure to use a bone folder to press the glitter down into the paper. I then glued the words to the cloud outline backgrounds. For the “birthday” sentiment, I used the birthday stamp in SSS Circle Sayings set, and stamped it in place with Peacock Feathers Distress Oxide ink. 

Trace around the die and fussy cut to creat a cloud outline. 

Finally, I placed my elements on my cards to determine the placement of everything.  I used glue to adhere everything as the paste was slightly 3D. I found it easiest to adhere the negative Fern die cut first, holding the positive die cut in place. It took quite a bit of pressure to make sure the elements were stuck down and I used acrylic blocks to hold everything down while the glue dried. 

I love how these cards turned out and there is a difference between the two pastes - the moonstone glimmer paste has more golden flecks in it, while the Moda Scrap paste has a more satiny pearl look to it. I hope you can give these cards a try. Thank you so much for joining me and have fun crafting!