Mens Polo Shirt Card

My mom asked me the other day if I could make a birthday card for her. It was going to be for a toddler who turns two, and since I have wanted to try out making a shirt card for a while, I thought if I could find some fun papers, it could work as a card for a two-year old. I went into my downloadable papers and found this really adorable dinosaur patterned one. Since the card called for a double sided print, I choose the other pattern, the stars, as the backside of the dinosaurs. 

I followed Mixed Up Crafts tutorial on how to make this card, and it turned out to be a very easy AND fun card to make!😃

I thought the inside of the card looked rather plain, so I fussy cut one of the dinosaurs, and stuck it on the inside.

In hindsight I thought I needed to show the age on the front of the shirt, so I die cut the number two, and stuck it on the shirt pocket.

I decided to make an envelope to match the card, so I stuck on a scrap piece of paper that was left over after making the card.

Mixed Up Crafts very easy to follow tutorial for this card.

Frozen

Happy Birthday!! A "Frozen" shaker card.

Today's post is a real short one. I just wanted to share a birthday card I made for an eleven year old American girl who is a big fan of Disney´s Frozen. I don't know the girl in question, but a woman in one of the card-making groups I belong to on FB asked if anyone would consider making a birthday card for her daughter, who will be 11 in the beginning of May. I think quite a few said they would make a card and send to her.
I actually spent an insane amount of time making this card. I don't own anything card making wise that has to do with Frozen, so I had to go online and find a coloring picture to download and print out. Then I had to color and fussy cut it, before coming up with a type of card to put the picture on. I had initially planned to make a rocker card and had made a rocker card base(Rocker Kite Card), however, the image didn't fit very well on it, therefore I changed my plan, and made it into a shaker card instead.
I hope she will like it!!😃

Simple birthday cards that turned out to be not so simple....

The other day I needed some quick birthday cards, and I decided to do some that I have tried out making before. I ended up with three cards, two that I will share here now, and one that I will share a little later.

Trifold Shutter Card

The Trifold Shutter Card (thepaperpixie.com) is a really easy-to-make card that has somewhat of a wow! effect, and it was made rather quickly. The other card, on the other hand, a Twist and Pop Card (mixedupcrafts.com)gave me a heck of a hard time! Due to the fact that it's measurements calls for card stock measuring 12", and I hardly have any, I had to resize the card. The actual card it self is easy enough to resize, the twist and pop mechanism inside, however, turned out to be a totally different cup of tea. I managed something in the end, though, and hopefully the recipient won't be able to see the many "swear" moments I had a long the way! I will definitely have to see if I can get a hold of some larger card stock!!

The front of the Twist and Pop Card

Twist and Pop Card, opened

Embossing on vellum

I was not happy with my hot air, or heat gun, so I decided to invest in a new and more powerful one. I talked it over with my better half and he recommended buying an industrial brand that he has lots of experience using in his job. SO I did just that, and ended up buying a Steinel HL1920E. It has an output of 2000W compared to my old craft one that has only 300W. It also has a manual step-less variable temperature of 80-600 degrees Celsius! I was eagerly waiting for its arrival, but at the same time I was really worried that it would scorch my paper.

My new heat gun.

So when it had arrived I put it to the test. I did various embossing powders on various types of card stock, and all in all I was really pleased with the result. It gets really nice and hot, so the actual heat embossing goes really quickly. I do however have to make sure that I don't hold it in the same place for too long, as the paper then will turn brown🔥🧯. Oh, and it is really important to be aware of where I place my fingers😰.

I decided to make a card with the top middle one in the picture, the one with the flock of butterflies flying off.

Birthday card with gold tinsel embossing powder.

The gold embossing powder I have used is Gold Tinsel from Ranger, rangerink.com, and it is a fairly coarse embossing powder. This means that it doesn't melt on smoothly, but is rather rough to the touch, a bit like sand paper.

To me the ultimate test of my new heat gun would be to heat emboss on vellum. I haven't tried that much with my old heat gun as I have struggled to get it warm enough, and have ended up getting a really poor result. Therefore I decided to give it a go and make the whole front of a card out of vellum that was heat embossed. It actually came out really nice! The only thing I would have done differently on this card is that I would have put double sided adhesive on the entire piece of vellum, as smaller strips of double sided adhesive shows through the vellum. On this card I was lucky enough to be able to hide the glue strips behind the flowers.

Birthday card with heat embossed vellum front.