Swirly Cupcake Cards

Hi y'all,

I almost called this post how to cover up a million mistakes.  I am going to show you my boo boos and fixes.

I have some super important people with birthdays this summer so I pulled out my Swirly Cupcake stamp and got busy.

I want to show you my first whoops!  This particular mistake is called a hickey in printer circles.  What causes a hickey is something on your stamp or on your printing press roller; but I just stick with the stamps...for now.  A hickey is a tiny circle.  I see it in printed pieces all the time (not from our shop!).  To get rid of mine, I rinsed off my stamp in cool water, flipped my paper over and tried again.  Easy fix!

hickey

quicke shadow

My idea for the card was to use summer bright popsicle colors.  I used a variety of dye inks to get the colors I wanted (Distress, Hero, Color Box).  I inked up the stamp with the lighter color and made a quick "shadow"  with a darker ink.  You can see the light and dark inks on this swirly cupcake row.   I made three rows with three different hues.

before "string"

ink smudge

Now for mistake number two and three. I must not have clean the purple off of my stamp and it showed up in the green cupcake.  I decided to pretend I meant to do that.  Julia Child taught me that.  Then I did the thing I always do-- I had ink on my finger and smeared it on my card.  Ugh!  I was going to emboss a small panel, but I decided to punch out black banners instead.  I wrote "happy birthday"with a white gel pen and really liked how that looked.  I felt like there were too many banners for hole punches and twine, so I used gems for holes and a Micron pen to draw string.

Shiny and really blue, really in real life

perfect pearls

all over stamping

For my second card, I wanted to play with Perfect Pearls.  Solid shapes look great with Perfect Pearls. My Woodland Deer stamp looks gorgeous with Perfect Pearls.

 I hadn't played with this medium in awhile so it was time.  Using Perfect Medium I did some all over stamping.  Then I decided to add gold, purple, and blue.  Which I hated, so I just went with the blue.  I trimmed it off and made a panel. 

I embossed celebrate from my Doodle Blossoms Stamp Set in Ranger Black Sparkle embossing powder.  I wrapped up the card with baker's twine and gems both from my stash to complete a visual triangle.

Now I'm hungry.  Cupcakes, anyone?

Happy day to you,

Carolyn

Want to peek at my Etsy Shop?  Click here.

Materials:  Materials come from my Etsy shop or Amazon where I buy most of my supplies because I live in the sticks.  And I'm always digging in my scraps, stash, and treasure box.