Colourful birthday card using Mixed Bunch

It was my Grandma's Birthday recently. I wanted to make her a bright card with lots of colours. I used a colour combo from the very colourful DSP consisting of Daffodil Delight, Tangerine Tango, Rich Razzleberry and Pool Party. I stamped the flowers using the Mixed Bunch stamp and punched them using the Blossom Punch. I stamped a few extra flowers and cut out the centres. I stamped the "Happy Birthday Grandma" sentiment using Rich Razzleberry and the Hobbycraft typewriter alphabet (yes, it's the only stamp alphabet I have so I will use it again and again and again...). I attached the flowers onto Daffodil Delight cardstock and matted everything onto Tangerine Tango cardstock.

Inks: Stampin' Up Daffodil Delight, Tangerine Tango, Rich Razzleberry, Pool Party
Cardstock: Stampin' Up Daffodil Delight, Tangerine Tango and Pool Party cardstock, Hobbycraft white 160 gsm cardstock, Kraft card
Stamps: Stampin' Up Mixed Bunch, Hobbycraft clear typewriter alphabet
Punches: Stampin' Up Blossom Punch
Crafting paper: Stampin' Up Designer Series Paper International Bazaar
Other: Papermania adhesive gems from the Capsule Heather series

Andy Warhowl

Today's card is inspired by the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge. This week's theme is Let's have a laugh. The Simon Says Stamp Design Team presented such cute cards using Paper Smooches stamps. I don't have any Paper Smooches stamps although I would love to get some. But right now, as I recently invested in a Big Shot I won't be buying more stamps anytime soon. Well, I guess I will, but not quickly enough for this challenge. I do have some stamp sets with cute animals so I thought I might be able to make something funny with those. I decided to make a Andy Warhol inspired card using the cute owl from the Stampin' Up Animal Stories stamp set. The card is quite simple, but I think it turned out all right.

I started by dividing a 12x12 cm piece of white cardstock into a 3x3 grid. I stamped the owls in Distress Embossing ink and heat embossed using clear embossing powder, using a Stamp-a-ma-jig to place the stamps. The using scrap paper to mask every square, I used ink blending foam to colour the background using Tim's Squeezed Lemonade, Salty ocean and Picked raspberry distress inks. I used a grey Sharpie to draw lines between the different colours. I left the middle square empty, and printed the sentiment onto yellow Hobbycraft cardstock. The font is a free one called Always in My Heart which I downloaded from a free font repository here. I die cut (of course!) the sentiment using the Chalk Talk dies, inked around the edges with Squeezed Lemonade and very lightly with Picked Raspberry and attached two adhesive gems. Last, I matted the owls onto yellow, pink and blue cardstock and attached to Kraft card.

Inks: Tim Holtz distress embossing ink, Squeezed Lemonade, Salty Ocean and Picked Raspberry Distress Inks
Stamps: Stampin' Up Animal Stories owl
Cardstock: Hobbycraft white 160 gsm cardstock, blue and yellow cardstock from the Hobbycraft 3 Shades of Yellow and 3 Shades of Blue 160 gsm cardstock, pink cardstock from the Papermania Sizzling Red Hot collection
Other: Ranger super fine detail embossing powder, Stampin' Up Chalk Talk dies, Sizzix big shot, Papermania Capsule Sunshine adhesive gems

Turtle friend - late birthday card

I realised the other day that I missed a friend's birthday, so I wanted to make a card quickly and also play on the theme of being late. This adorable little turtle friend is from the Stampin' Up Fox and Friends stamp set and I think he is perfect for a late Birthday Card.

I stamped my little turtle friend on Pistachio Pudding cardstock using Pistachio Pudding ink. I also stamped him onto white cardstock, and cut it out in the shape of a circle. I fussycut the scalloped circle in Crisp Cantaloupe cardstock. I used the Hobbycraft alphabet stamp to stamp the "Sorry I'm late" sentiment and cut the banner in Crisp Cantaloupe cardstock. I stamped the "Happy Big Day" sentiment from the Chalk Talk stamp set onto white carstock and fussycut it using scissors. I also cut a slightly bigger banner in Crisp Cantaloupe. Then it was just all about assembling it all onto Kraft cardstock and adding the little ribbon and bow. Hopefully my friend will be charmed by the cute little turtle and will forgive me for the card being late.

Colours: Stampin' Up Pistachio Pudding and Crisp Cantaloupe (inks and cardstock)
Stamps: Stampin' Up Fox and Friends, Chalk Talk, Hobbycraft Clear Stamps Typewriter Alphabet
Cardstock: Stampin' Up Pistachio Pudding and Crisp Cantaloupe, Hobbycraft white 160 gsm cardstock, Kraft card
Other: green ribbon from my stash

Monday Challenge - "A is for..."

This is one of those "throw the kitchen sink at it" type of card. The inspiration for it was the Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge blog. This time the challenge is "A is for...". With it being almost February, and me not having even started on my Valentine's day cards, my "A" was definitely for Amore. Well, my other idea was Alligator, but it turns out I don't have an alligator stamp, so Amore it was. I decided to use colours and techniques which are far outside my comfort zone to see what the result would be of being a bit experimental.

I created the background by stamping the small heart stamp from the Stampin' Up Tiny Tags set using black and clear embossing inks and heat embossed them using clear embossing powder. Then I added the colour using Tim Holtz distress paints, by dabbing them onto my crafting mat, spritzing with water and then swirling the paper around in the paint.
After that I just went crazy with stamps, I used the Stampin' Up Gorgeous Grunge and Tiny Tags stamps as well as Tim Holtz Set-Sketch and  Heartfelt in Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo. To top it all up, I used a doily stencil and inked through it in Aged Mahogany.

I printed the word amore using the font Lucida Blackletter, cut out the letters and used them as templates to cut the letters out in black cardstock. I then added several layers of Tim Holtz distress stickles in Worn Lipstick. I stamped the Tim Holtz Heart n' Soul stamp onto watercolour paper and coloured using distress markers. I fussycut the image, and stamped it in black soot onto the background before adding on the cut out using dimensionals. 

To finish, I made the flower based on the instructions here using a paper I had previously coloured with Distess paints. I also stamped the Tim Holtz Curiosity stamp in Vintage photo before assembling the flower. I matted everything onto dark red and attached everything onto Kraft cardstock. 

The card turned out very different from how I usually make them, much more grungy and messy. It's nice to push yourself a bit out of your comfort zone every once in a while. 

This card just might have left the
InvisiblePinkCraftroom in a bit of a mess...

Colours: Distress paints Barn Door, Picked Raspberry, Victorian Velvet, Mustard Seed and Antiqued Bronze. Distress inks: Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain, Aged Mahogany. Distress markers: Barn Door, Bundled Sage, Weathered Wood, Victorian Velvet
Stamps: Stampin' Up: Tiny Tags, Gorgeous Grunge, Tim Holtz: Heart n' Soul, Set-Sketch, Curiosity, Heartfelt
Cardstock: Watercolour paper, black cardstock from my stash
Other: Finnabair doily stencil, Tim Holtz Distress Stickles Worn Lipstick

Welcome to InvisiblePinkCards

It was inevitable that a combined food and papercraft blog would eventually result in two separate blogs. That has been the idea from the start. My food and crafting hobbies don't progress with the same speed. Sometimes I go through phases where I only want to craft and aren't very interested in experimenting with new recipes. Other times I don't have any cards of the day available although I have a backlog of recipes to publish. And now that I have started to play with the idea to enter some of my cards into challenges, it feels weird to have a recipe in the same blog post.

So this is the result, a completely separate blog for my attempts at crafting. Most of it will be cards, but there might be some other crafty stuff showing up sooner or later. Or maybe not, we will see. My inspiration with writing my little blogs is to keep a record of what I have been achieving. And of archiving the recipes I try. And of course, to keep my Mum up to date with what is going on in my life. It's hard to have your family so far away. At least this way those of my family and friends who want to know what is going on inside my head and in my life have a chance to do so. And hopefully the blog will find it's way to other readers as well eventually. If not, just doing my crafts and writing these little blog posts makes me happy and like I accomplish something, and that is the most important thing.

So far, my attempts at creating cards have been displayed on InvisiblePinkFood, but in the future they will all be here on this blog. You can also find all my cards on my Pinterest board, and I will keep posting any new creations there as well. Below are some of my favourites from old posts (clicking on the image will link to the blog post). I hope you will like my attempts at crafting and maybe get some ideas from my cards.