First Birthday Balloon Cards

A change of tack from the Christmas cards from yesterday… First Birthday cards!

As our twins are now over a year old, it stands to reason that a lot of their and our friends who we know through the baby groups will also be turning 1. So I have been making some cards for them. We have already been to three birthday parties this year!

These cards were made for 3 little guys who had a joint birthday party, and as I was making one, I made 3, all variations on a theme. Here is a close-up of one of them:

And two smaller images showing the cards in a slightly different fashion:

The cards use the Cloudy Day embossing folder from the Spring/Summer seasonal catalogue, and the Up, Up and Away stamp set. The card colours that I have used are retired colours (using up my old stock!) but there are similar colours in the new colour families, like Daffodil Delight, Not Quite Navy, and Certainly Celery. The ink pad I used for the sentiment and the balloon basket was Pacific Point, and for the balloon was Raspberry Ripple. The balloons were stamped onto Whisper White card and then cut out by hand (unfortunately we don’t have a matching balloon punch, though there are lots of others to choose from!). And each card has only one balloon as the boys are 1 year old.

The dark blue card does have the sentiment stamped onto it, it just doesn’t show in the photographs. I think that in retrospect, the cards with the cloudy panel mounted onto a base card are more effective, but we live and learn! As I was batch-making, I stamped all of the balloons and sentiments in the same colours, but you can mix and match to your heart’s content. There are a number of different balloon patterns in the stamp set that you can use on their own or to mix and match, so don’t think you are limited to just a dotty balloon! And there are a couple of sentiments and accessories to expand the range of uses as well – they could be balloons on strings of bunting instead of hot air balloons, for example.

Come back tomorrow, when I will have another post for you to get more card ideas and hopefully inspiration to get you crafting. Or, sign up to get the blog sent to your inbox – see the box at the top right of this page for details and to sign up!

And don’t forget to contact me if you love this stamp set and want to be able to make your own cards using it.