Hello, hello!

Today I’m back with a fun birthday card to share with you! I picked up a handful of goodies from the Essentials by Ellen release last month that are all birthday themed, and I’m so happy to be finally playing with some of them! The two products that I’m using today are the Sprinkles 6x6 layering stencil and the Cake Day stamp & die set. Both of these products are great and can be used for many more occassions than their intended birthday themes. Stay tuned for more from me on this stamp and die set, I’ve got at least one idea brewing so far!

I’m really excited that Ellen Hutson released a stencil set, especially one that can be used in a variety of ways! This layering stencil gives you a background full of sprinkles; you can use all four stencils, both of the dot stencils together (or separately), and both of the long sprinkle stencils together or separately. You could heat emboss some sprinkles or even use gels and pastes! But, I decided to dry emboss the long sprinkle stencil today because lately I’ve been on a bit of a kick when it comes to embossing stencils. I feel this technique really stretches the use of stencils and gets you the bang for your buck.

I started this card off by building my cake first. I went through my color combo swatchbook and chose the color combo of Peacock, Tidepool, Honeycomb, Sorbet, Grapefruit, and Ballet Slipper inks from Concord & 9th. My inspiration/reason for choosing this combo was that I really wanted to have pink ombre cake layers, but I didn’t want to use Dragonfruit, Sweet Pea, and Carnation at this time. I first stamped the outlined cake stamp in Versamark ink since I wanted the ‘happy cake day’ sentiment to be white heat embossed so it would look like frosting on the cake layers. I set this cake aside to cool down and stamped another cake with C9 black ink. With the white cake ready to be worked with, I stamped the cake layer stamp in Ballet Slipper, Grapefruit, and Sorbet inks in that order.

I stamped my sprinkles in rainbow order of my color palette, wiping the ink off the stamp between colors. Since there was no easy way to track what sprinkles were stamped what color, I got a little bit of color overlapping on some sprinkles, which I don’t mind too much. I needed to cut out the cake layers on the black outlined cake, so I followed a tip Carissa Wiley shared in this video where you use the cake outline die on of a scrap piece of paper, which gives you a template to line up the die that cuts out the cake layers. This is a must so that you don’t accidentally cut part of the cake you didn’t want to! With my layers cut out, I die cut the white cake and layered it behind my black outlined layer. I added another cake die cut behind it to make it a little stronger, then decided to add a candle to the top of it. Since I wasn’t sure if the C9 black ink could be used with alcohol markers, I stamped the candle using Simon Says Stamp Intense Black ink. I decided to stamp the body of the candle with Grapefruit ink, then colored the flame of the candle using YR3, Y4, Y2, and Y3 Ohuhu alcohol markers.

With the cake done, I got to work on the background. I was playing around with the Sprinkles stencil and using all four layers with four of the colors from my color palette. However, I didn’t like how that panel turned out, so I pivoted to my new favorite technique and dry embossed the large sprinkle stencil on some plain white cardstock. I decided I wanted to mat this embossed panel, so I cut it down using my paper trimmer to 3.5 x 4.75-inches. To tie into my color palette a bit more, I decided my card front would be Tidepool cardstock, and I would stencil both of the dot stencils on it in Tidepool ink. I love this more ‘subtle’ stenciling, it adds a layer of fun and texture, but it isn’t too overwhelming!

Before gluing my white embossed panel down, I stamped the candle glow stamp and heat embossed it with gold embossing powder. I thought the card was feeling a little flat, so I very lightly blended on some Honeycomb ink to the candle area to make it look like the candle flame was illuminating behind it. I also lightly blend Ballet Slipper ink behind where the cake would go to give it a bit of dimension and differentiation from the white background. Before popping my cake on the white panel, I decided to add some faint shading with my lightest cool gray marker (CG II 00 for Ohuhu) and colorless blender around the frosting layers and the edges of the cake, but I did it so lightly that it’s not incredibly noticeable (I didn’t want to go too crazy and ruin it haha!).

I popped the cake up on some thin foam squares for extra dimension, and before sticking it down, I die cut a couple more candles to add some dimension and support to to the back of the candle before adding foam to the back of it. I placed the cake down on the card front and called this card done! I feel like my card could look similar to/a CASE of Carissa’s card (which is fabulous and linked above!), but that was not intentional! I got to playing with my color palette and ended up with this!

These products are so fun, and I can’t wait to use them more! I think I’m in a little bit of a creative rut again, so it might be a little before I come back to this set, so be on the lookout! Thanks for stopping by the blog today, I hope to catch you next time with more inspiration 😊.

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