One sketch, two Birthday cards

I'm making an effort to send out more cards, so I decided to make a couple of birthday cards for friends for this week's sketch challenge at Card Positioning Systems. I should have just added "belated" to the sentiment, since one birthday was yesterday and the other is tomorrow, and neither card is in the mail!

I designed the border rectangles in SCAL, so I may use this sketch again since it's easy to cut the pieces. I was surprised at how versatile it ended up being.
The second one is a penny slider/spinner card, which was inspired by my husband. Ooh, can you make them move across the card? he said when I showed him my coloring. Like I said, this sketch is really versatile!

I whipped up some sentiments in InDesign and made matching backgrounds in SCAL (although I did hand-cut the text circles). Later that evening, I was looking online for a "Happy Birthday" sentiment stamp to replace the one stolen by the gnomes in my craft space, and much to my surprise I saw that great minds think alike: the Penny Black Flourish Birthday rubber stamp uses the exact same font as I did, Scriptina. Groovy! I think I'll save my pennies and just use my digital version for now, all things considered (it's free font too).


Update 3/26/11: Wow, I won the CPS Sketch Challenge #210. It' chosen randomly, but hey I'll take it! I think these two cards counted as one entry too. Looking forward to playing with the Ippity stamps I won...More birthday cards!

March Madness Blog Hop Day #2

It's the second day of Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack's Mad About Paper Blog Hop!

Here's my Day Two project: Soccer Kick Off Gift Box with penny slider top

You should have arrived here from JoAnn's blog. Tammy's blog is the next one on the line up and you can reach her blog by clicking on her name below. If you have problems with the link, her blog's URL is in parentheses after her name -- just copy/paste it into your address bar. (And if you didn't see yesterday's projects, be sure to check those out too.)

Stampin' Dymonz (www.StampinDymonz.com)

Lynetta (CraftyNetta) (craftcreationsbynetta.blogspot.com)

Cynta (cynta.blogspot.com)

Jessica (customcreationsbyjessica.blogspot.com)

JoAnn (thecreatorsworkshop.blogspot.com)

Christina (cg-says.blogspot.com) <---you data-blogger-escaped-are="" data-blogger-escaped-b="" data-blogger-escaped-here="">

Tammy (fromme2upapercrafting.blogspot.com)

NikkiP (nikkimopapercrafts.blogspot.com)
Thank you for hopping!

About the Gift Box:
I had so much fun making yesterday's project that I starting obsessing on what to make for my second project... Well, luckily Mom called me and told me about her new project: penny slider cards (also called spinner cards). Since I wanted to stick with a sports theme, I immediately imagined moving a ball across the paper, maybe making a little loop...

This was also a perfect opportunity to use the Smirk brand paper in my stash. Their For Him series includes some soccer-themed items, and the soccer ball brad fit over the penny perfectly!

I wish I could say that I drew the loop myself, but I had to design a template for it in SCAL first. I ended up manipulating the Latin Small Letter A from the Wingdings typeface. What can I say, it worked perfectly. I cut the template on my Cricut, traced it onto the decorative paper, and then cut it out with my knife. If you'd like to try this yourself (and you have SCAL), see the download link at the bottom of this post. Please let me know if you use it!

I wanted to put something in the box, so I decided to wrap some Hershey's Milk Chocolate Nuggets with the patterned paper. Well, we only had two left, but get the idea!

Decorative paper and brads: Smirk for Him
Other supplies: Core'dinations and Hammermill cardstocks, ZipDry glue, Tim Holtz scissors, Cricut & SCAL, HP copier & ink, Fiskars papercutter & finger knife, foam tape, Copic markers (100 & R59, for edging)

Slider card tutorial at Splitcoaststampers
Download penny slider loop template SCAL cut file