Die Cut Happy Birthday Cards

I had several birthdays to celebrate this month and wanted to make them with my Silhouette SD. I thought I would make one design and customize to match the recipient's favorite colors. This pink and purple one is for our niece who turned 13.

I have long admired paper cutters who cut by hand with a craft knife, but any time I think about trying it, I run the other way because I just don't have the patience for it. I finally drew a cake without measuring a single thing - no rulers or straight lines or grids or pre-thinking it. The fine lines are a delicate piece to remove from the adhesive mat and I manually thickened some areas to make gluing easier, but this is still not something I'd want to make many times over. My laziness is quite the task master!

I dabbed a glue stick like a bingo card - up and down, not rubbing across, or else the glue goes underneath the paper and would show in front. Again, the fineness is a hindrance.

As you can see, there is not much gluing surface here and a little too far on one side means you'll see it from the front so some fussing with the lines are needed.

In the end, I love how the thick black paper feels on top of the metallic colors below. It's a tactile thing that isn't quite the same if I put the colored piece on top, which would have been much easier.

Does anyone else come across this dilemma? Which do you prefer to do - difficult and tactile with challenging gluing OR larger, easier to glue pieces that go on top of the black?

Lark Book: Quilled Wedding Cake Card

Wedding season is just around the corner, and this quilled wedding cake is the dreamy kind I imagined of having for my wedding day, when I was a girl. My real wedding cake was more grounded, but I have a soft spot for idyllic storybook versions.

Books simply don't have enough pages to show every angle of every card, so I'm going to show a couple close ups here. Throughout the 128 pages and 26 projects, I tried to incorporate as many new ways of using quilling strips as I could. See the ornate table surface? Can you believe that was a happy accident? I needed to ensure my table top and bottom strips were straight and even, so I made a spacer. I finally realized the spacer made a wonderful accent to the card and seemed deliberate.

My hubby helped me choose the wedding cake paper - it's textured and looks like frosting with a hint of metallic. Metallic ribbons encircle each tier and adds to the magical ambience.

When designing these patterns from scratch, I often made several versions because color combinations look different in my head than they do in real life. This green and teal version was one of the first. As you can see it's hard to keep a straight quilling strip when gluing such a long strip. I tried building the card from strips and using the teal to encircle the bottoms. Didn't make the cut for me.

Coral pinks/orange hues and chartreuse green have been popular wedding colors lately. I often challenge myself to use bolder color combos or ones that are not my personality. Cutting the cake shape seemed the best way to allow the quilling decor on top really come through unobstructed.

Sometimes I didn't have the right color ribbon to match my quilling strips (and didn't want to buy a whole spool), so I would use a felt marker to color a plain white ribbon.

So although the final pink and silver version is completely in my comfort zone palette, it's simply a classic to me. It also makes for a lovely congratulations card to the newlyweds because paper is traditionally given in the first year - how apt!

Pretty Quilled Cards is launching March 4, 2014 – less than 2 weeks away. Feels like I'm counting down to Christmas!

DIY Flocking

I've been seeing flocking all over the stores (and some ingeniously decorated nails). It's kind of like colored, fluffy, cotton candy, but in teeny pieces. I didn't want to buy more things, so my first thought was can I make my own? Yes I can!

I borrowed the microfine shredder from the kitchen, wadded up some paper scraps from Daiso, and shredded away. In case I didn't cover everything, I used the same color yellow as a backing, covered it in glue and dipped into my paper flocking (tweezers are helpful!). Then I glued it to my daisy flower, which then decorated my 3D cakes.

3D Cake - Daisy Birthday Card

Ever get those birthday cakes topped with plastic signage? I kind of wanted to replicate that for this birthday girl's card. I stacked the words 4 times out of card stock to make my own chipboard, just like I did for the LOVE sculpture. This time I made the top layer out of a lighter green so when it's viewed from the side, it gives another dimension - just a little something different. I stuck foam squares near the top so they stick up, then glued the bottom part behind the daisies.

Her fave color is yellow and since my original cake was too short to let me go nuts on the decorating,  I made it twice as tall. I always place my elements on my card to assess the spacing before gluing permanently. Although I thought everything was well placed, it ended up being lower than I intended when I stood back. So I added the fireworks I used on my Mickey Mouse project to fill the top. I feel like I overdid that too, but ah well, I'll live.

PS, here's a teaser image for my next post, where I'll explain how I made the stamens in the middle - yes, it's paper!

3D Cake Card with Punched Flowers

My sister in law is always well-dressed, so put together. She is feminine without being girly. I  wanted to give her a 3D birthday cake card that expressed that (I hadn't chosen my greeting yet when I took this photo).

I had so much fun making these flowers after being inspired by Michelle's version. After stepping back I worried I had gone too far and overdid it, but I think I'm just not used to so much adornment, being a tomboy at heart.

I cut some 1/8" quilling strips in half which made them more pliable as I decorated the cake. This let me strew blossoms in a more random way. I used a white felt marker to dot some stamens in the middle of the blossoms.

I dipped the blossoms into Aleene's Tacky Glue and they held fast when applied to the cake. I didn't have to sit there and wait around. I'll be showing how I shaped the blossoms in a following post soon.

3D Cake Card by Stephanie Elliott

This is a card made by Stephanie Elliott, who customized my 3D Cake Collection. I love how she customized it with dripping icing and then topped it off with glistening glitter. Here's how she did it:

I love microfine glitter so I layered cardstock with double sided adhesive, stacked the icing designs on the cake, and sent it through the cutter twice – once to cut the design from the adhesive liner, the second time to actually cut the parts from the card stock. The design cut beautifully and, after coloring the icing & cake parts with glitter, assembly was easy (with your great instructions). I used the double sided adhesive only because I wanted to color by selection with glitter. Using that adhesive, though, proved to be incredibly useful in assembly. I completed one card and constructed the box (which is great, by the way). I love how everything turned out.

I cut all of the parts for the first card on a Black Cat Cougar. I cut all of the parts for this last card on a Cameo (can’t let either cutter feel left out). This card is a top fold card with accordion pockets on the inside. There are note cards in each pocket. Again, thank you so much for designing such a wonderful set. I’m already thinking of a dozen events for which your design will be perfect.

OK, so I admit to being just a tad OCD and the way Stephanie has opened up those pockets to show the accordion file holding note cards makes me itch to make something just as organized. However if I were the recipient of this wonderfully coordinated card, I couldn't bear to use them!

When I asked her about the differences between cutting machines she's used, Stephanie went into great detail, describing their fine points and sharing her knowledge. She has been tempted to start a blog to share tutorials and files, but I think she's busy creating gifts to be cherished. She very kindly let me show her work here, and I hope you'll leave a comment for her to read - and hopefully she'll start her blog to share more of her projects! Thank you, Stephanie!

3D Cake by Michelle and Kelly

I simply love seeing my designs come to life in another person's hands. It's wonderful to see the same cut file used in different colors and texture than I imagined.

The first card is made by Michelle of Michelle My Belle Creations. It seems so obvious now that the flowers she used was such an ideal choice. I also like the bling she added using sequins in the upper parts of the swoosh.

The second card is by Krafting Kelly of Finding Time to Create. Ah, these are the times I wish I had a ready supply of scrapbook paper in my shelf. I love how she placed the initial right on top of the cake - like one of those special candles. Again - why didn't I think of that?

Thank you for playing with my files, Michelle and Kelly!

3D Cake Collection

I'm quite excited to offer these 3D paper cakes, easily customizable for a birthday, wedding, or anniversary in my store.

Here's an example of a single layer chocolate cake with white circles icing (I used white vinyl). I've seen many examples of polka dotted icing on cakes, and thought it would great to have a matching background.

Add a second layer of cake on top and some swooshes to make a classic celebratory statement. I designed a subtle backdrop pattern made of diamonds and left a blank plaque above for whatever occasion you need. 

My favorite has to be the 3-tier cake. Somehow the more tiers it has, the more fun it is. I decorated it with ribbon and matched the background using a scalloped edge. The chocolate shavings on top were made of quilling paper, but you can just as easily use any brown paper with 1/8" width.

What cake would be complete without a cake box? I used some scrap plastic left over from some packaging and glued it with Scotch Quick Dry glue. I also added some easy-open tabs so you won't have to struggle prying open a well-fitted box. All the cards are 5x7 inches.

Michelle of MichelleMyBelle Creations made an awesome purple cake with flowers, sequins, and textured backgrounds. I like how she added a bow to the stand which makes it more dimensional.

Please let me know what you think in the comments section!

Happy birthday 3D paper cake

Wishing our niece a happy birthday with a bubbly cake. She was into pink for years and now that she's on the brink of becoming a teenager, I thought I'd give one last shout-out to pinkness. Somehow the years of coloring with her made me really aware how well pink and purple go so well together.

The purple confetti and curls on top were made of quilling paper. The text is cut from vinyl. Everything else was cut with my Silhouette die cutter. I designed the 3D cake pattern months ago but got sidelined with a huge project, so I'm relieved to finally re-visit this in time to use it myself.

3D Cake Card

Here's an idea I've been toying with – a paper 3D cake. I love the feel ribbon instantly gives to cakes. The chocolate shavings screamed to be made out of quilling strips. The platter/stand is cut from metallic green card stock. I even made a cake box to protect it, since it'll get crushed in an envelope.

Each tier is made separately in case they need to be varying paper stocks representing different flavors. This 3-tier cake is obviously for a wedding, but take away the top 2 and there'll be more room for a message for birthdays or anniversaries.

Quilled Wedding Cake

Micahael’s sells extremely thick quilling strips that normally fray on me when quilling small tight details – they make excellent borders though. I first started glueing the 3 tiers of cake together and pinned them to cork to prevent shifting, then filled the inside with frosting – with a hidden heart in the bottom tier of course.

Measurements:
• top tier: 6 cm (fold at 1.5 x 3 x 1.5 cm)
• middle: 9 cm (fold at 2 x 5 x 2 cm)
• bottom: 9 cm (fold at 2.5 x 7 x 2.5 cm)
• card: 5×7 inches