Cheerful birthday wishes

I’m feeling cheerful. It’s birthday season coming up for us so I decided to make a start on birthday cards. My own family and friends I make personal cards for, but for mum’s friends I tend to keep a stock in for her to choose from.

It’s been a very Scan’N’Cut heavy week on Create and Craft, a channel I often have on for a bit of inspiration. My Scan’N’Cut was a wonderful birthday present a year ago, but is very much underused; I love it,but mainly use it to cut mats and layers in perfect sizes and to make boxes. I thought it needed a bit of a challenge.

When trying to sort out my stash last week I found a pouch of Tattered Lace mini dies with’Celebrate’, 3 butterflies of varying sizes and a candle (if memory serves, they were a C&C members’ gift a while back).

 I thought the candle would look good as a background in nice bright colours, different sizes and differing angles. Trying to do this freehand or with dies would have been so time consuming, and I’ve only got one size in die so it would have been expensive, likewise with stamps. Scan’N’Cut to the rescue.

So, it was time for the technophobe to get clever… 

1. I die cut the candle, then stuck it to a piece of white card and scanned it in, then saved it to the machine’s memory. 
2. I opened the file, then asked the machine for 10 copies of image, I later found this wasn’t quite enough but it’s really easy to ask for more, or delete off spares.
3. My paper I wanted to decorate was A5, so I moved the candles around an area I thought was that size – I should really have scanned in the paper first, then I’d not have had to add more, but I had taken pity on Kye who hates the noise and sits on top of my machine hitting the scanning.
4. Once I’d got the area covered, I changed the sizes, making some bigger than the original, some smaller and leaving some untouched.
5. Next, I changed the orientation of each. I like that the machine gives the option of 90 degree, 10 degree and 1 degree moves, it means I feel like I’ve got full control. I wanted to keep all the flames very generally facing upwards, so the most I rotated was 80 degrees.
6. Once I thought it was ready, I put Kye out (getting batted for daring to expose him to the frost) and scanned in the paper I was using, my candles didn’t cover enough so it was a two minute job to request some more and cover the rest.
7. When it was actually ready, I changed the blade holder for the pen holder and set the machine off drawing. 2 minutes later I had a lovely sheet of black outlines.
8. I know I could have asked the machine to colour the candles, but a) I can’t remember how, and b) I fancied colouring in. I unloaded the mat and turned off the Scan’N’Cut.
9. I used my mini Sharpies because they’re nice bright colours, but I couldn’t find a yellow I wanted to use, so after a little bit of hmming and haring I decided to use gold glitter glue instead which I actually really like, gives the background a bit more of a celebratory feel. Unfortunately, the ink bled a little, but it’s not too noticeable.
10. I kept the actual card very simple, but layering my background onto bright blue, then black cardstock. I embossed a Happy Birthday sentiment onto bright blue, but it looked a bit lost so I used the offcuts to mat and layer up a one inch square to put behind it. Finally, because my background was narrower than I’d haveliked, I trimmed the card front down so I liked the borders and again used my offcuts to make a strip down the right hand side of the inside of the card which was now visible.