Let them eat cake

My friend's little girl, Makenna, turned three recently, and she asked me to help her with the decorations for the party.  Makenna is as girlie as they come, so it's no surprise that the color scheme for the party would involve the color pink.  Far be it from me to argue with a three year old little girl.  Besides, pink is probably my one of my favorite colors, so I love to get some pink in when I can.  I threw some ideas out to my friend.  She loved them and basically let me loose.

I invited a friend over to come help since I wasn't exactly sure my ideas would work. My friend Mandy is pretty much the only friend I have that I can say, "Um, I've got an idea of what I want to make but it's probably going to take hours and hours to make, and it might not even work because it's just an idea in my head. Wanna help me?" And she'll jump right in, no questions asked. So when I asked her she said, "I can only come Monday, Wednesday and Friday." Awesome.

This is the invitation to Makenna's birthday party as shown on Tiny Prints.   


{image via Tiny Prints}

Cute, eh?  If you aren't familiar with Tiny Prints, they are pretty awesome.  It's hard to justify making invitations when there are invites that cute out there.  And very affordable. 

The stipulations for the party were that balloons are not allowed and that it had to be set up and torn down within 30 minutes since parties were scheduled back to back.  What that in mind, here's the decorations I made.

For the centerpieces, I took the invitation literally and we made cakes using cardboard, toothpicks, and paper.  I used my Silhouette to cut out little flames for the candles and attached those to the candles with floral wire. 

Here's all six of them.  I alternated between light pink and dark pink since the invite had two shades of pink.  I also tried to match the candles to the invite. 

Here's the cakes in action with the rest of the decor.  I kind of wished this was my party, only somehow I don't think 33 candles on each cake would have looked quite as cute. 

And another shot of the party area.  Mandy and I cut wrapping paper to make table runners to lay over the table for all the cafe tables  -- something I love to do for parties because it is very inexpensive and always adds a huge pop of color -- and then punched a million circles out of cardstock and scattered them on the runners to create polka dots.  Have I ever told you about my obsession with polka dots?  I can't get enough.  It's funny.  My twin sister has a thing for stripes.  For me, it's always been polka dots.  They complete me. 

For the tables that did not have cakes on them (my friend wasn't sure how many tables there would be), I used my Silhouette to cut out large M's and we glued those down to large circles.  It took probably 10 minutes to set everything up and about 5 minutes to pack it all up with some time to spare for the next party.     

And I can't leave you without showing you the cake.  My friend had it made.  And I think it was perfect. 

The real cake couldn't have been any cuter.  Love.It.

I think the biggest compliment I got was from Miss Makenna herself.  She was playing with one of the paper cakes and my friend asked her, "Do you like it?" Makenna replied, "I like it.  It's pretty."  My heart melted.

Happy Birthday, Makenna!   Thank you for allowing me to be apart of your life.  I look forward to getting to know you as you grow into strong, beautiful woman.  A woman that will hopefully love to craft.  Know that you are loved.  By so many people.  Eat your cake now, Makenna.  Because all too soon you will start thinking about how many calories it has in it.  :)

Hippo Bithday, Shiraz!

I am so excited to show you this next card.  I actually thought of it while I was making this card back in February knowing full well who I would make it for.  I sketched it out on some scrap paper and basically waited until this week to make it.  It was hard to wait that long, but I think that makes me all the more excited to give this to the little boy it was meant for. My BIL scoffed when he found out there were no moving parts (LOL) so I hope this one doesn't disappoint.  :)

Shiraz turns 2 this month.  He's a pretty amazing little guy, a lot of which stems from the fact that he has pretty amazing parents. Shiraz's father is sort of the older brother Mr. Bean never had.  Mr. B looks up to him and respects him and loves working for him.  Shiraz's mother is a fascinating woman.  She is from Tanzania, fluent in like 5 different languages (I don't think I'm exaggerating here), operates Journey to Africa, a company that specializes in customized safaris to Tanzania and Kenya (please check it out even if you aren't considering a trip to Africa...it'll make you want to go, like now), is an awesome mother, baker and, of course, crafter.  She is the one who inspired me to actually sit and learn to sew and is a huge supporter of my addiction to paper.  So, needless to say, I always try to make something special for Shiraz.  Because I know whatever it is I create, it will be appreciated.  And that is like icing on the cake for a craft addict, isn't it? 

The inspiration for this card was a combination of the Elephant Baby card and Jenn Ski's alphabet cards.  While I was making that card, I thought how cute it would be to have a diorama-esque card that showed animals and numbers instead of letters.

I went with hippos because, well, there aren't many animals that are cuter than hippos.  Since Shiraz was turning two, I wanted two hippos sitting in a body of water - much like the grassy waters you see on any nature show. Everything was sketched out and hand cut except, of course, the Thickers and mini alpha stickers.  I am really upset with myself because I actually made little party hats for the hippos and then forgot to glue them down. UGH. 

For the water, I used two different tones of blue cardstock.  One textured.  One flat. I tried to keep it from looking like an ocean. The jury is still out on whether I was successful or not, but I think we can all use our imaginations here.  

For the grass, I used two different papers.  One was a light green patterned paper.  The other was Bazzill Bling, but I used both the bling side and the reverse (matte) side of it.  Each blade was hand cut and glued down in a pretty ugly manner to a piece of cardstock, which is one reason why I had to change my original plan to have grass along the bottom of the card. 

For the sun, I used a circle punch on some scraps and just clipped it to look like rays.  I added a button for more color from a huge jar that my grandmother gave me of her leftover buttons.  Gotta love Grandma.  The clouds were freehanded on the reverse side of the cardstock and hand cut. 

I didn't originally include the pennant banner, but what says 'birthday' better than a banner?  So, I used some twine to make it look like the hippos where holding up a banner just for Shiraz.  I literally tied the twine in a bow around the hippos' tail and prayed it didn't rip the tails off.  That's what you call livin' la crafty vida loca, my friends.  


I used Thickers for Shiraz's name and placed it on a little name plate I created with blue cardstock.  OK, I'm lying.  I didn't do that on purpose, but don't you love when stuff works out like that??  :)  What I did do on purpose was place the letters in a way that made it look like they were each floating in water.   And, finally, I think it goes without saying that I used a ton of pop up dots to piece this card together. 

If you are still reading, that was about it!  I think with every card you make, you think of all these things you could have done differently or other things you could have added - and even things you forgot to add - but one aspect of card making that I enjoy is the problem solving part of it.  You start out with a one dimensional sketch and figure out how to make it two dimensional.  I love how it came out and I know Shiraz and his parents will love it, too.

Happy Birthday, Shiraz!  It's been such a pleasure to watch you grow up.  I hope you love your card, because I think I already know what I want to do next year. :) 

A Gleek-y Birthday

I think it is pretty obvious what this card was inspired by. I am a HUGE Glee fan and so is my friend, Blanca. She's kind of my clone in the sense that we have the same sense of humor and the same interests...fashion...books....food....trashy TV...you name it. I met her in college at a time when I really needed my own set of friends. I had just gotten out of a bad relationship, and I found myself in that position where I realized all of my friends were actually his friends. So, she took me under her wing and showed me how much more fun college can be without a boyfriend. She's been my partner in crime ever since.

Blanca is only 9 months older than I am but was born the year before I was. So basically we are only the same age for 3 months out of the year. And, since I like to be a pain, I like to give her a hard time about that. And it never gets old. Well, she does. Not the joke. Ha ha ha. [I hope she's reading.]

Anyway, this card is for her birthday. I solicited the help of my friend, who is pretty awesome to allow me to use her and abuse her crafty awesomeness, so let's just give a shout out to Anita. She was my hand model as well as my Cricut extraordinaire.



Pretty simple. Anita used Sure Cuts A Lot on her Cricut to cut out the letters in the font I wanted. We took a picture of her hand and had it printed at the Walgreens photo center. I cut out the hand in the picture and used pop up dots on the letters and the picture. The black letters are Basic Grey's Micro Stickers (my fave). I didn't have them in black, so I used a Sharpie.

Here is the inside.


The inside has a quote from the show: "Wait, so old people can join Glee Club now?" - Finn Hudson
All the paper is Bazzill, of course. Love it.
It's no coincidence that I posted this today. Glee premieres tonight!! If you don't already watch it...well, you deserve a slushie. ;)