Tag: birthday cards

Thanks for the click! I feel like the proverbial broken record these days: “I’ve been on book deadline, so I haven’t had a lot of time in the craft room.” And when I’ve been there, I’ve had to do simple cards, which isn’t my true style. It’s been like this for months. Not really enough time to post either, but I try to keep up when I have to. Therefore, my post about Batman will be as short as I can make it. (There’s about another week until I think I can finally create for days on end again, and I can’t wait!)

Despite book deadlines and ASAP work and regular old “life” stuff, our family has birthdays in the latter half of the year, so I find myself away from home more often and scrambling for time beforehand to make birthday cards. I heard that the nephew wanted a superhero party this time around, and even though my gifts didn’t match that, I made sure my card would. I actually bought the “Let the Good Times Roll” roller coaster stamp and dies set months ago for his card. I guess I’ll make that another year. 🙂

I was randomly browsing Pinterest when I was killing time away from home one day, and I stumbled upon a seemingly easy Batman card. It looked simple enough to emulate (or CASE: Copy and Share Everything or Copy and Selectively Edit), which was perfect for my lack of time, but of course I had to put my own style to it too. I knew I had the oval punch and alphabet set she used, so using hers as a guide was perfect. Many, many thanks to the designer for bailing me out when I needed a quick card! You can see the original here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/250372060519376773/.

As cute as I thought the original card was, I missed the light in the sky – you know, the one that always shows up as a beam whenever they cast the bat sign into the air from the spotlight. So I had to add that to my card, leading to my little bat. (I didn’t have room around the bat to punch the holes like the original designer did.)

To create the light beam, I first used Wink of Stella White and then layered another coat over most of it with either Wink of Stella Clear or Gold. The Wink of Stella line (Clear especially) is a favorite product in my craft room. I love that little bit of shimmer without the mess, and it dries quickly. I kept layering the colors, trying to keep my freehanded lines straight and also get both colors into the beam without one overpowering the other.

The oval punch used was Stampin’ Up’s Extra-Large Oval Punch and I just used a scrap of yellow with it. Once I had it punched, I laid it onto my card and marked with a pencil the places the beam of light should theoretically end. I’ve never been very good at drawing 3D things, but I thought this turned out all right.

I do not (yet) own the new Spooky Bats Punch from Stampin’ Up and I’m not a huge Halloween person, so my choices for bats in the oval were limited. I’ve hand-drawn them before when I needed one, but I chose to fussy-cut one out of my paper share of current DSP for this card. It comes from the Toil and Trouble line in the current Holiday catalog. I looked for one that seemed most like the bat sign we know and love and cut it out using my beloved CutterBee microscissors.

Although the original poster used Stampin’ Up’s Labeler Alphabet (and I had intended to as well), for the sake of time, I opted for my SMASH Label Maker, which would save a lot of time of inking and trying to get the letters straight and cutting out the words before gluing them. There wasn’t much in the way of instructions on the packaging, so I still hold my breath and count when I operate it, and I’m still not entirely sure of the best way to keep the words fastened once I have them imprinted, but I keep working with it and learning.

For “To a super nephew,” I added extra spaces between the words and cut apart the words evenly when I was done before haphazardly affixing them first with Scor-Tape (which has mostly worked before). Before I was finished, I went back and reglued them with Tombow Multi, though, and that seemed to keep them where I wanted them, since the edges still wanted to curl up a little with the Scor-Tape.

I don’t seem to have a picture of the inside. Maybe I forgot to take one. I thought I used a “Happy Birthday” stamp of some kind since I didn’t say that on the front. Regardless, that’s all there is for this card and blog post! Back to my regularly scheduled edit… Thanks for stopping by!

If you’re in need of craft supplies from Stampin’ Up, I’d love to be your demonstrator! You can shop with me at https://www.stampinup.com/ecweb/default.aspx or find me on Facebook at Constantly Creating / The Little Whatnot Shop. The current Annual and Holiday catalogs have some amazing products this year, and we’ll soon be making cards using the November-only special called the Snowflake Showcase! I recently got some of the flocked “White Velvet Paper,” and it is gorgeous! You don’t want to miss this special!