Ribbon, Buttons and More with Baby Cards

As the weather has turned colder and the jewellery biz slows down to a manageable level I like to participate in some card swaps so that I have a valid excuse to get to the card table.  

Here are my cards for a “baby” theme …

I tend to like pretty plain cards most of the time, as you know, but baby cards are kind of an excuse to let fly and add more embellishments than I would normally.  

Stampin Up Swirls & Curls, Curvy Verses, jewellery tag punch.

The first card uses lots of layering to build colour interest – a white cardbase, then a layer of card then pink spotted paper and a strip of blue spotted paper and yet another smaller strip of a lime and purple paper that I found in my offcuts box.    The stamped sentiment has been given specific baby meaning with the word baby stamped onto a tag (cut with the jewellery tag punch) and attached with a pastel green split pin.   I’ve added two little birds, one in strawberry slush and the other in Pacific Point inks.     

The large area needed to be filled in a little more so I used a silver inked pen and ruler and added some stitch sort of lines as a border.     I then added in a ribbon in pretty Blushing Bride, tied in a bow   The whole effect is rather pleasing – what do you think?

Stampin Up So Many Scallops, Scallop Punch

For the second card I went for strips of the same patterned paper in different colours – I was limited in colour choices here but settled on pink, blue and orange, keeping it as neutral gender as I could!   As the paper isn’t thick like cardstock it wouldn’t give the sturdy, heavy feeling I like with a handmade card,  so I added a matted layer of more white cardstock to place the papers on.   I stuck these on as evenly as I could (not easy!) and added a white satin edged organza ribbon .    

Pretty polka dot buttons were added in contrasting colours to the bottom of the paper strips.  As I didn’t have a blue button I thought the green was a good compromise and this led me to stamping the sentiment  in Green Galore ink to match.  

Stampin Up Punches Three, Extra Large Oval Punch

The last card I decided to go for a pretty pastel blue and for something different rather than a standard card, this is simply folded with an overlap in the cardstock.   To do this I cut a strip off an A4 sheet of cardstock 10cm wide.   I scored it twice – once at one mark under 5 inches (on my imperial scoreboard) and another 5 inches later  (the top full layer is just that smidge shorter so it will lay flat.  This left an overhanging piece which I edged with a scallop punch. 

 

To decorate there are multiple layers – white over the blue card base, then a pastel blue patterned paper, some white shimmery cardstock and a final layer of the patterned paper.   The sentiment was stamped in Bashful Blue and punched out with the extra large oval punch.   A layer of white cardstock was added to the inside for writing on and to finish a blue ribbon tied shut that can be slipped on and off to open the card.   

I think I now baby-carded out, but hope these will someday become a part of some little person's memory box :)

Till next,

Annette :)