Bling It On, Baby!

This month the i {heart} papers Design Team’s Challenge was “Blingalicious” – a card (or project) with plenty of bling. Not a problem for me; bling and I have a long history, and I certainly have no shortage of sparkly stuff (thanks to Kate at IHP)!

As a New York City girl, I know that nothing goes better with bling than Basic Black. Add a pop of color, and you’re good to go. Tres chic!

The base of this card is actually PTI white, but I covered the front panel with black and a strip of awesome, lightly textured GCD Venetian Lace paper, and then tied it with some sumptuous Light Fuchsia faux suede ribbon. The birthday greeting is from the adorable and VERY useful Happy Greetings stamp set (which, by the way, comes with its own bling, and is ON SALE right now for really cheap!). I just love the font on this set.

The star is from PTI’s Star Prints set. I stamped it with black, and then colored it with a Copic marker to match the ribbon. The bling, of course, is what makes the card super-special. It’s the ZVA Crystal Symmetrical Flourishes (small). I snipped off a stone left over from a previous project where I had cut apart the other flourish on the sheet, and colored it with the same Copic marker and used it to dot the “i” in birthday. Kate has loads of ZVA Bling in the store, so go check it out!

And go check out the rest of the IHP Design Team to see what they came up with for this Blingalicious Challenge:

• Amber (So Many Colors, So Little Time)

• Cathleen (Crooked Card Creations)

• Deb (With a Stamp and a Song)

• Dee (StampincuzILuv2)

• Loretta (love to create)

• Lori (Inking Aloud)

• Lynn (Stamperosity)

• Merry (Random thoughts of a Confessed Stamp-A-Holic)

• Tracy (Who IsTracy?)

And of course, KATE at the IHP Blog!

Carolyn

Daniela's Shower

My daughters left for Italy last night to attend the wedding of their friend Daniela. Lucky girls (and their "posse") will be spending 2 weeks in a beach town called Sperlonga, making side trips to Rome, Florence, and other places I will hopefully see someday myself (come on, Publishers Clearing House!).

The bridal shower was held earlier this month at a gorgeous restaurant in lower Manhattan, and I was drafted (not unwillingly) to make the cake and help my daughter with the favors, which were cookies shaped like little wedding cakes.

This was the cake. It was a yellow butter cake filled with Cannoli Cream filling. It's covered with buttercream. The pearls around the base of the tiers are made of fondant, and the flowers (detail below) are made from sugar paste. Oh, and this is the last cake I baked in my old oven, if you've seen the post from earlier this month. It was delicious, if I must say so myself!

Soggy — It’s the New Black

It was a dismally rainy spring here in the New York area. It feels like there haven’t been more than a handful of days in the last couple of months that I didn’t need to carry an umbrella with me. It’s really taken a toll on people’s spirits, I think.

Anyhow, I decided that my new PTI Scattered Showers stamps would be a perfect match for the adorable It’s Raining, It’s Pouring paper collection (Piggy Tales) from i {heart} papers, to make a card to brighten someone’s day.

I paper-pieced the umbrella using one of the patterns in the collection, and cut the piece out with some Circle Nestabilities (on SALE!!). After mounting it on a couple more circles, I used my craft knife to cut a slit in the umbrella stick so I could slip some of the yellow silk ribbon through. The sentiment is cut out with the Ribbon Tags Nestabilities (also on SALE!!) and airbrushed a little to brighten it up.

Want to brighten up YOUR day? Go check out ALL the stuff that Kate has on sale at i {heart} papers!!!

Carolyn

Some Wine With That Cake?

Well, now I can reveal that THIS is what has been keeping me busy for the last couple of weeks. My youngest brother turns 50 this October, but he lives in California so the whole family won't be able to celebrate with him then. Since he and his family came for a visit east this week, we surprised him with an early birthday party yesterday. Yes, it's very early, and yes, we are kind of a strange family. This is the cake I made for the occasion, and yes, it is 100% edible. Even the wine bottle is made of cake!

The box the the bottle is resting on is the main cake -- butter cake with cannoli cream filling. The drape is fondant, sprayed with an edible pearl finish. The crate was made of fondant (a couple of weeks ago so it could dry hard), and then painted with food coloring to simulate a wood finish.

I created a stencil and used an edible cake decorating marker to get the words on the side of the crate. The grapes and poppies are also made of fondant, or a combination of fondant and gumpaste -- all edible (except for the wires in the flower stems!).

I created a custom label in Photoshop, using a picture of his house, and sent it off to be printed with edible ink on edible paper. I adhered the paper to some thinly rolled white fondant and cut it out before applying it to the bottle. The photo below was taken before I painted the edible gold onto the top of the bottle and placed it in the crate.
It was a lot of fun to make this one, and truly a labor of love!

Carolyn has 2 Dads

Yeah, well kinda. A dad and a step-dad. Both are very important parts of my life. I confess (since neither of them reads my blog) that often I make the same Father’s Day card for both of them, since they’ve never been at the same place on Father’s Day, and have never been to each other’s homes. But this year, due to some unusual circumstances (to be discussed in another post), we’ll all be together today. So, 2 different cards were in order.

This one’s for my Dad. I pretty much totally CASE’d it from Debbie Olson’s card. I used some of my delicious Wisteria paper and Glazed Brads (both available at i {heart} papers), and the PTI Star Prints stamp set. The ink and card base are SU! Elegant Eggplant.

This one’s for George, my step-dad. It’s CASE’d from Mary Fish’s card. See, I’m having creativity issues these days – at least as far as cards are concerned. This uses all Stampin’ Up! supplies (wow, haven't said that in a while!) except for the little adhesive stars, which I can’t remember where I got.

Hope you and yours have a wonderful Father’s Day. I’m off to a family gathering that you will definitely hear more about later (or tomorrow).

Carolyn

Marrakech Butterfly

Can one ever have too many birthday cards? I think not! So I’m building my stash for the second half of this year.

Here’s a conundrum I’ve been having lately. Tell me if this happens to you: I go searching through my stash of birthday cards, pick one out for the upcoming occasion, and then stop because I can’t remember what I gave that person last year. What if it was the same card?!!! Because sometimes when I make a card I really like, I make 2 or 3 of them. And so I end up NOT using a card from my stash, and making a brand new one just in case.

Anyhow, back to this card. I used Julee’s Mojo Monday Sketch #90. And as you can see, I took the sketch quite literally! It’s such a great layout for a focal image, and it just begs for gorgeous paper.

I was struck by how well this piece of Marrakech paper worked with the stylistic shape of the butterflies from the Flutter Bitsy set. I colored it with matching Copic markers, but what you can’t see in the photo is that I went over the entire butterfly with my clear Spica glitter pen. It gives it the most beautiful, yet understated, shimmer!

The greeting is from a fabulous little set called Happy Greetings. I just LOVE the font in this set. It’s a Sparkle Clear set from Hero Arts, and it comes with its own bunch of bling! I didn’t use that bling on this particular card, but I did use the bling that came with another Sparkle Clear set, Mushrooms.

Oh, did I mention that EVERTHING you see in this card, with the exception of the black and white cardstock, is available from Kate at i {heart} papers?

What I used:
Stamps: Flutter Bitsy, Happy Greetings
Ink: Palette Noir
Paper: Marrakech 6x6 pad, PTI White, SU Black
Other: Nestabilities, bling from Mushrooms set, Spica pen

Enjoy!

Carolyn

If you think these CUPCAKES are depressed…

I just had to shell out $500 for a new oven! Yup, last night my oven just up and died on me. I’m not really sure what happened, but at least it waited until after I had baked the 4 layers I needed for tomorrow’s bridal shower cake! I had some leftover batter, so I threw it into a cupcake pan and figured I’d bring them into work today. When I went to get them out, I found them like this. So sad. There was a metal wire/cable thingie dangling from the roof of the oven, with it’s end stuck in one of the cupcakes. See the third one in the top row? That’s where the wire was stuck.

I don’t know exactly how old the oven is, since it was here when I bought the apartment. But if I go by the revision date on the manual (1988), this baby has put in it’s 20 years and is ready for retirement. No sense in trying to fix it. And yes, that is an old and well-loved muffin pan.

Anyhow, just thought I’d share my misery with all of you. I’ve been busy all week doing the prep work for this cake, but I’ll post a picture of the finished cake tomorrow night.

Carolyn