Make an 80th Birthday Card for someone special

I wanted to make an 80th birthday card for someone very special so went to some extra time and trouble.

I die cut a butterfly using my big Shot from a sheet of pink paper, then embossed the sheet with a floral embossing folder.  I mounted the embossed sheet onto lilac paper.  I took some gold heart peel-offs, and used them to infil the butterfly, trimming a couple down for the body and antennae.  I stuck a gold 80 across the top left of the panel, with a tiny gem.

I took a smaller sheet of pink paper and embossed it with a butterfly border, and mounted this on lilac paper, too.  I attached a gold peel-off greeting and another heart.  I mounted both panels to the white card, with a ribbon bow at the left, and 3 pink gems at top right.

Inside the card I put two layers of paper, pale pink and the deeper pink of the front.

I die cut a butterfly from the pale pink, so that the darker pink showed through, then mounted the pale pink butterfly on the dark pink paper, as you can see.  Below the pale pink butterfly you'll see that I cut an aperture using a thinlits dies - through the window you can see the month of June, with the date highlighted.

I had previously printed out a calendar from 1933, highlighted the birthday, and in the Important Dates section at the bottom of the calendar I inserted the birthday of the recipient.

I die cut some flowers with the Big Shot, in pinks and lilacs, and assembled them inside on the dark pink sheet.  I stamped "Happy Birthday" in purple ink, and affixed a couple of gold butterfly peel-offs to complete the card.

This is how the various layers actually work together.  It took a little time and effort, but looked really good.  I hope you like it.

21st birthday cards for twins

My friend's "identical" twin daughters will be 21 years old in a few days, so I decided to make them each a card.

I toyed with the idea of making cards that looked as if they had been split, like the egg that created them, but decided against it.

I wanted to indicate their "twinness", but also their uniqueness, and eventually decided to create something really simple - the same basic idea, different colourings.  I chose to use the letters of their names and 21.  

I chose different fonts, colours and sizes for the letters and numerals, and corrugated some backing papers in contrasting shades, but used the same card shape.

I'm quite pleased with the results, I hope the girls will be too!