birthday Archives - Cricketleg Creative

Catching Up

May 21, 2021 Handcrafted Cards

After a break, I’m catching up on family event cards this week!

Well, hi!

Unfortunately, it’s been about a month and a half since I’ve posted to the blog. Wow, had no idea it was that long! I’ve been busy. Jumping rope, going on an amazing anniversary trip (30 years, woohoo!), starting a new business, surviving!

As a result, I completely spaced on keeping up with family birthdays and anniversaries! It just completely slipped my mind. And I am bound and determined to keep my commitment of doing all the family birthdays and anniversaries in 2021!

Therefore, this week, in an effort to catch up, I’ve made a couple of simple cards and looked through my stash of already-made cards to see what I can do to get all of May taken care of. I have four cards to share with you this week.

The striped “hello” card and the heart punch card are from previous challenges, and you can see more about them here and here.

The birthday wishes card is made using a Hero Arts background stamp with a rainbow stamp pad from the same company. The birthday sentiment and animals is from an Avery Elle stamp set. The tissue paper accents add a punch of color and tie everything together. And it’s fun!

The Cutie card is made using stamps and stencils from a My Monthly Hero kit. Because I’ve always loved the color combo of orange and pink this was a fun card for me to make.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some June cards to get to!

Happy Crafting! Y’all take care!

“Sparkle & Shine” Challenge

January 5, 2021 Challenge Cards, Handcrafted Cards

Here are a few entries into the Simon Says Stamp “Sparkle & Shine” Challenge.

Well, hi! It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted. I took a much needed break and now I’m back in the swing of things and ready to start doing challenges again.

Today, I have a few entries into the latest Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge.

Never Let Anyone Dull Your Sparkle

How fitting!

This striking card is made by using double stick tape and glitter. I just arranged the tape in vertical lines, starting with the wider tape. Then I poured glitter over the entire card. It sticks to the tape! After that, I just repeated the same steps using the narrower tape and a different glitter color.

The sentiment was made in Canva and printed out onto cardstock. I then trimmed the top and bottom of the cut out sentiment with more tape and glitter and attached it to the card.

Easy! And super sparkly. Looks very New Years-y to me too!

Birthday Girl

Although this card is fairly simple in design, I think the impact is high! I love the combination of two papers that have different patterns but the exact same tone on tone colors. The metallic gold paper and Motherlode embossing powder for the sentiment really make this card sparkle and shine!

Out of This World

For Christmas I received a fun Lawn Fawn stamp and die set from one of my kids. And I’m so excited to be able to use it now!

I stamped some images from the set onto white cardstock and colored them in with Copic markers. Once they were done, I used the coordinating dies to cut them out.

The background for the images was made using watercolors. It took a while to build up the color, but it was so fun to do! I’d like to keep working on this technique to really get it down. But I’m happy with this first attempt at a watercolor galaxy type background. Once the paint was all dry I splattered the surface with both white goache and a metallic gold paint to get that….sparkle and shine!

Party Animal

This card is for my daughter’s 25th birthday. I’ve been itching to use this cute birthday stamp set from My Favorite Things since I bought it a few weeks ago. I love the simple lines of the images. Clean. Fun.

I stamped three of the scenes from the set onto cardstock and colored them in with Copic markers, keeping the color palette fairly small. I wanted the overall effect to be more subtle since I used a metallic gold accented paper background. But I did trim out each scene in gold metallic tape.

So, there you go. Four entries all with some kind of sparkle, shine, or both! Fun challenge!

Stay tuned for further posts and challenge entries! To see my last challenge post you can go here.

Y’all take care, and have a Happy New Year!

“Anything Goes” Challenge

December 1, 2020 Challenge Cards, Handcrafted Cards

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge this time is no rules–just anything goes!

As much as I love freedom, you’d think I’d cheer with an “Anything Goes” challenge theme. But what I’ve found is that I actually enjoy some light parameters within which to work. Still, I do love me a challenge, parameters or no.

So, without further ado, here are my five entries into this “Anything Goes” challenge.

Camellia Thanks

Well, I don’t really know if it’s a camellia, but it looks like one to me! I stamped it on cardstock, colored it in with Copic markers, fussy cut it out, and mounted it onto patterned paper.

You can’t tell it from the picture but there’s also super fine glitter on the center parts of the flower.

Simple card, but the camellia is the star of the show!

Birthday Wishes

I have really come to love ink blending. That’s the technique I used to make this rainbow starburst card. Post It notes were used to section off the “rays” and I ink blended between them.

The lines were not as crisp as I’d like so I used different colors of metallic tape to cover them. I love that look!

A simple white-embossed sentiment finishes off the card.

Busy Bees

The star of this card, in my opinion, is the inked and embossed background. It was touch-and-go for a while there as I got the hang of which colors seemed to work best, as well as which embossing folders worked best.

Simply put, you ink up one side of an embossing folder, carefully lay a notecard down on that inked side, close it, and run it through your die cut machine.

Sometimes it comes out looking like a fail, but once the ink dries, the color usually evens out.

Discomfort

This may seem like a strange quote to put on the front of a card, but I sent this specifically to the author of the quote, Brooke Castillo. She’s a life coach, trains other life coaches, and is the host of my favorite podcast (The Life Coach School Podcast).

I just wanted to send her a note of thanks for all the good she puts into the world! And I thought that using this letterboard die set from Sugar Pea Designs was a perfect way to highlight her contributions.

Happy Thanksgiving

Look how versatile that letterboard die set is! I get to use it on another card!

The possibilities are somewhat endless for this set as it can be used for any season, any (short) saying, any mood. I love it!

And I think we all know that the vibe of this particular card is especially true. I don’t know about y’all but those Thanksgiving leftovers…..phew. They ’bout did me in.

Embellishments are from a recent Simon Says Stamp card kit of the month (items from that kit also used on this card).

“Remembrance” Challenge

November 13, 2020 Challenge Cards, Handcrafted Cards

The Monday challenge from Simon Says Stamp is Remembrance.

Well, hi!

Welcome to another installment of entries for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Blog Challenge. This week’s theme is Remembrance/Thinking of You.

Because I already did a “Thinking of You” challenge very recently, I decided to lean more into remembrance as the focal point for my challenge entries. And to be more specific, I wanted to work with old photographs.

My Sisters’ Birthdays

Because I have two sisters’ birthdays coming up in December, I figured I’d go ahead and crank out all three sisters birthday cards for this challenge. (The other one is in July, but why not do it now too?)

I found old photos from their birthdays on my computer and built the cards around their photos using similar color palettes for two of them. The other one seemed to have all pink in the photo so I went with all pinks for the card.

For this first one, I just layered paper in the background. Then cut strips of coordinating colored cardstock for the candles and glued them on randomly. The “flames” are a tear drop hole punch that I colored in with markers. The sentiment is perfect!

anna's birthday card remembrance challenge

Here’s that pink themed card. I stamped the cake layers as actual cake layers, but then used them vertically as candles on the envelop flap as well.

I used dies from Altenew (I have the matching stamps but didn’t use them) for the balloons on this card and envelope. The balloon strings are baker’s twine. Also, look at my gorgeous Mama! More on her later.

My Beloved Rosie

Unfortunately, on Easter Sunday this year we lost our beloved Rosie girl. She was hit by a car and passed away from her injuries. It was a shock and we all miss her terribly. She was the sweetest dog.

Each morning when I walk our other dogs, I pass the spot where we found her and spent our last moments stroking her and telling her it was going to be okay. Each morning, I see that spot and my heart just aches.

So I decided to make a sweet little remembrance to keep in my craft studio. It’s not a card, just a sweet little display of my Rosie…my shadow…my girl. Just to keep near me. It features two of my favorite pictures of her.

My Mother

My mother lost her battle with Alzheimer’s in June of 2016. If you’ve lost a loved one you know that you can go for periods of time and remember fondly with no longing. But then suddenly you get triggered by something, and you just have an intense longing to be with them.

This happened to me just a few days ago. I was having a rough, hormonal kind of day already. But I decided that, to help me get going into the holiday spirit for Christmas card making, I would listen to an old Christmas album that I grew up with. I listen to this album ALL THE TIME. But as soon as it started play, I just started balling.

I began to think of my mother and my childhood and how much simpler things were then. And I just felt that intense longing.

So when remembrance was chosen as a challenge topic, I knew I had to make something around my mother. She was just such an amazing woman and I miss her so much. Plus, I mean, she was just gorgeous!!

So these are my entries. And now I have two beautiful and touching mini memorials to keep in plain sight in my craft studio.

I’m off to work on some more projects.

Y’all take care!