Papertrey Cake and Spellbinder Masking

Good morning everyone! How 'bout that Superbowl? I'm not really into watching sports on television (I'd much rather be at my girl's basketball games).....so the best part for me was the Southwestern Crescent Rolls I made for snacks, LOL!! Well, have you seen all of the new announcements over at Nichole's blog? I am just giddy with all the events happening this month! And one of my dear friends, Pine (Heather Nichols), will be having her own line of stamp sets!! Congratulations Piney (and the other new designers), I am just jumping up and down in my seat for you!!!!!!!!

So I know you're waiting for some more calendar talk this week and I haven't forgotten. But I just had to head to my stamp room during the football game last night. With all of the new Papertrey stamp sets that will be coming out, I thought I better get my fingers a little inky with Papertrey sets so I can justify all of the new stamp sets that I am CERTAIN will be finding their way into my stamp room each month! LOL!

But to tie in with my calendar theme this week, I thought I would share my system for making and sending out birthday cards each month. I have a master birthday list in my calendar that I refer to each month. At the end of each month, I take a sticky note and write down all the birthdays, anniversaries, etc for the following month. That way, I know exactly how many cards I'll need for that month. I will then pick out the cards from my stash basket or a lot of the time, I'll stamp new cards just to have a fresh, new design. Cards that are needed unexpectedly, such as get well and sympathy are usually pulled from my stash basket as needed.

So this month, I needed to make some new birthday cards because my stash basket was running low. So I chose to use the Papertrey set called Piece of Cake. Oh my, is it a wonderful set. It focuses on this layered piece of cake but there are SOOO many fun sentiments to mix and match. The possibilities are endless!
Before I get to the overall design of the card, I wanted to show you a fun way to create a plate for the piece of cake to sit on. Debbie Olson did this on one of her cake cards and it was simply adorable. First, stamp all of the images of the cake and sentiment to make your main focal image.

Next, stamp the two layers of the cake onto Eclipse Tape. This tape is a slightly tacky tape that comes on a roll. It is VERY thin which means your images that you stamp over the mask will not have that halo line around them. The cut out mask is very thin so the ink covers over it nicely. An entire roll will probably last you a life time. Next place your cake mask over the stamped cake image.
Then cut an oval *plate* from a Spellbinder's Oval Die Template. This shape is from a new set of thinner ovals now available at Ellen's online store. I LOVE this new shape of the ovals because it's longer and skinnier and will accomodate sentiments and more narrow stamped images. Awesome!
Next, place the negative shape of the oval over the masked cake. Hold down with your fingers or use removable adhesive to keep it in place. Lightly mist the are with a Copic marker and Copic Airbrush System. The mist from the airbrush is so fine and evenly sprayed on that there is no comparison to sponging or chalks. I just love to use the airbrush for this technique.
Remove the Eclipse mask and there you have it....a fun, little, scallop plate for the piece of cake to sit on.

Here are my finished card designs below. They all have different layouts, yet have many similar components. I used Papertrey white cardstock for the card bases. You know how I've been loving the crisp, clean look of the white card base. This cardstock is really thick and makes a wonderful base. All of the patterned paper is from October Afternoon and is 4" x 4" in size, just placed differently for each card. Each main image was stamped a little differently using different flowers and sentiments from the Piece of Cake stamp set. I also used some of the long border images from the Faux Border Papertrey set. I always like for there to be some element that ties the patterned paper line into the solid cardstock line. Usually I use a length of ribbon but since I just did little loops of ribbon on the main image, I opted for the border stamps.
Each card also has brads attached to the main image. Now I know that brads have been around a long time but I have found THE BEST brads ever. My friend Cindy Lyles has discovered these little gems and has them available from her store Star Lit Studio. The brads have this perfectly round shape with no part of the metal *legs* showing on the sides of the brad. The colored finish is nicely rounded so that it looks like a big drop of enamel paint was dropped onto the brad surface. And there are lots of trendy colors to choose from. Who knew that brads could get me so excited. Well, there is Brad Pitt but Cindy didn't include him in my order, dang it!
And to finish off my cards, I stamped coordinating envelopes for each card. There are plenty of sentiments to use on the inside of the card and the envelope so I was able to use a different sentiment for each part of my card. There's even a hand stamped sentiment for the back of the card so I did that too!

Well, if you stuck with me through this long post, Thank You!! I really do appreciate all of the kind comments you leave on my blog. It just makes my day to see that you took the time to leave a comment. {hugs from Mish}