Birthday Lollipops

This card post is a response to Freshly Made Sketches 224, Seize the Birthday’s “Cupcakes and Candy” challenge, and The Challenge #60.

 

The layout comes from Freshly Made Sketches, based on this sketch:

The colour scheme of pink, red, grey and white comes from Always Playing with Paper’s The Challenge, which gave this picture as inspiration:

And finally Seize the Birthday’s challenge was, as the name suggests, to incorporate cupcakes and/or candy/sweets into the picture, and also the card had to be a birthday card.

I decided I wanted to make lollipops after seeing this card. I don’t think mine turned out quite as well as that one… It was an experience to make, and though I don’t think it’s one of the best cards I’ve made it was good to experiment with different techniques.

I started by working out the sizes I wanted to use, then cut the topping papers. First was the large white panel, which I repurposed from another card that I’d been unhappy with and dismantled. It was almost the exact size I wanted so I just had to trim it down. Next I cut the small strip of pink and white paper to go on the side.

Winding the twine was properly the most time consuming part of the card. I started by winding twine directly from the spool until I had the right size, then cut it to that length. I then unwound it again so I could measure the other two lollipops in the hopes they would all end up the same length. As it turned out one must have wound tighter than the others because it ended up smaller. Luckily as I was doing three I was able to position them so the size difference almost appears purposeful.

After much time and frustration winding up the twine as well as I could I applied glue to the back – primarily on the centre and the end – and pressed them onto the white panel of the card. I then left them to dry.

Once the lollipops had (more or less) dried I took a silver-grey pen and drew on the sticks for the lollipops. I originally planned to use cocktail sticks or toothpicks as the sticks, but I should have put them before the sticks, so I changed the plan.

Next I stuck all the panels into place using my roller adhesive. I positioned the small strip onto the back of the white panel first, then glued the whole thing into place.

Finally I wanted to add a sentiment. I wanted something like “Have a sweet birthday”, but didn’t have any suitable stamps. I looked online for sentiments and found one but it didn’t seem to work on the card once I’d printed it out. In the end I decided just to go ahead and use the “happy birthday” stamp that I have. I wanted to print it in red, but after three attempts of the colour not showing properly despite putting quite a lot of ink on, I decided to do it in black instead. I guess that’s what comes of buying cheap ink. If anyone has any recommendations of good ink for beginning stampers, do let me know in the comments!

So, that’s the card. It’s probably one of my least favourites of the cards I’ve made so far since starting card making at the beginning of the year. I still really like the idea of it, and perhaps one day in the future I’ll give it another go, but I don’t think it really worked out as well as I would have liked on this attempt.

Love,

Lady Joyful