Special 50th

This card was made for my Brother-in-law who celebrated his 50th birthday recently. It is similar to the card I made for my husband on his birthday but has been tweaked quite a bit. It looks much better in real life as it's difficult to photograph silver cardstock properly.

I really didn't want to give this one away, I became too attached to it!! You'll notice that I've been going nuts with my rounded corner punch lately!

Materials:
Cardstock: Brushed Silver, Very Vanilla, More Mustard.
Ink: Versamark, Chocolate Chip, More Mustard marker.
Stamps: Cheers To You.
Other: Silver embossing powder, heat tool, dimensionals, Hemp twine, Very Vanilla satin ribbon, Clear embossing powder,
Non Stampin' Up: Put On Your Party Hat stamp set by Fiskars (for the candle numbers), Kilometric gold and silver gel pens, paper by Kaiser craft, Ranger medium pen (embossing pens), Fiskars corner rounder punch (much better than my SU one), White Fizz glitter, heat and set powder.

Tips and Tricks:
1. I embossed the sentiment 'Cheers to you' in silver on the silver cardstock and I gotta say, it looked super cool!
2. I used my Ranger medium pen like a Versamarker and coloured in the beer foam with it. Then I applied heat and set powder, heated it with the heat tool, applied the White Fizz glitter and heated it again to set it.
3. The hemp twine wrapped around the Vanilla ribbon gives a more masculine touch I think.
4. The 50th candles were embossed in silver and coloured in with silver gel pen. The flames were coloured in with gold gel pen. These gel pens were nice and thick - gave good coverage but that means give the ink heaps of time to dry properly.

Stuff Ups:
1. Apart from having to stamp the beer mugs a few times to get crisp images, I did ok with this one, no major hassles!
2. Hang on, I forgot that I had to redo the 50th image because I smudged the wet silver gel ink.

Hubby's Birthday

Well it's two male birthday cards in a row! It's my husband's birthday in two days time and we will be in Bali celebrating it! This is hot off the press, just finished. I'm giving Jason his presents tomorrow so I don't have to take them on the plane. This is a pure Kate creation:

I'm thrilled with the result because it was looking decidedly dodgy for a while. It all came together in the end.

Materials:
Cardstock: Basic Black, Basic Grey, Going Grey, Whisper White.
Stamps: So Happy For You, Cheers to You.
Ink: Versamark, Chocolate Chip ink pad, More Mustard marker.
Other: Circle punch, big shot machine, dimensionals.
Non Stampin' Up: Paper by Kaiser craft, Glitter and white embossing powder, clear embossing powder, heat tool, Ranger Perfect Medium Pens, Cuttlebug diamond plate embossing folder, Coke Zero can.

Tips and Tricks:
1. To get the metal how you want it:

• Do be very careful! Jagged or not, this metal can cut you easily.
• Wash out your aluminium can. With sharp scissors, cut off the top and bottom of the can, then cut the cylinder up one side so you end up with a long rectangular piece.
• Dry off any water with a tea towel and cut a piece to fit inside your diamond plate embossing folder. Run it through the big shot machine.
• Trim the metal to the size and shape you want. I couldn't cut it straight with my scissors so I ended up using a circle punch to make the round discs. The punch cut the metal quickly and efficiently.
• I used double sided tape to secure the discs.

2. To heat emboss the beer mugs I first inked the stamp with Versamark then inked the stamp with Chocolate Chip ink before stamping on Whisper White card. Next I used clear embossing powder and the heat tool. After that I used a Perfect Pearls Medium pen (a Versamarker would be great too) to colour the beer foam and then used the white/glitter embossing powder to make the foam pop and shine. I used a More Mustard marker to colour in the beer mug.
3. The same beer mug is stamped in Versamark on the grey card to give interest to the background.

Stuff Ups:
1. I originally used a cactus stamp and green ink for the background but it looked terrible. The beer mug image works so much better.
2. As I said before, I couldn't cut the metal straight so I used the circle punch in desperation and it worked.