Stamp Spotlight - Cake Occasions and Cute Confections

Good morning friends!  Its me (Katie), and guess what, its Tuesday again!  Time sure flies when we're crafting huh?  Well, this Tuesday is Stamp Spotlight and I'm going to focus on a couple of my favorites.  The first one is a set called Cake Occasions and is a great all around set that will work for a variety of events and is very gender friendly.  The other one is one of the wheel stamps called Cute Confections.  This stamp works hand in hand with the first set and makes for a wonderful background stamp.

I had a lot of fun making my samples and I have a few tips and hints to share that may be new, old, or just a refresher.  Either way, I hope you enjoy them all.

So here is my first card and I geared it towards a wedding them and to be honest, kept it quite simple except for the awesome bling.  I love how my cake image turned out.

Isn't that sparkle just incredible?  There are probably lots of different ways to achieve this wonderful full coverage glitter look, but I'll tell you how I did it this time.  I first stamped my cake plate onto my cardstock and set it aside.  I took the bottom and middle layers (these are two separate solid image stamps in the set) and stamped them on cardstock.  I cut them out and then added Scor-pal's double sided tape to my cut out cake layers.  All I had to do was trim the tape around my already cut pieces, peel the liner off and douse them with glitter.  The top layer is the same as the middle, except I just hand trimmed the sides in a bit.  The glitter sticks awesome and then I adhered them to my card with pop dots.  I also used pop dots/dimensionals to attach my Basic Grey Sugared paper.  I did this to give some extra interest to the decorative corner punches I used.

Now its time for my little tip.  I decided to keep my sentiment off the front and place it inside the card.  Cake Occasions does come with plenty of sentiments, but I wanted to step it up a bit so I incorporated a wonderful set that came out last year called Card Categories Too.  In all, I had 5 separate stamps that I wanted to incorporate into a cohesive statement on the inside of my card.

More times than not, I don't put the stamp onto my block but rather take my block to the stamp.  Confused yet??  I actually lay down my words or letters onto my counter and then adjust the angle and spacing of my block as I bring it down onto my stamp.  In the picture below, I've gotten most of my words already on my block...

Voila, I now have a perfectly place word onto my block without bumbling around with my big 'ole fingers.  Another positive to this is that you aren't mashing your stamp with your fingers while you are placing it on your block.  In essence your stamp is rested in its natural molded form.

I ALWAYS test my image first on a scratch piece of paper.  At this point, I can adjust placement if necessary because I'll know if it looks off.

And here it is on the inside of my card.  I love the combination of the two sizes and fonts.

Recipe: Cardstock: Sweet Blush (PTI),  Colonial White (CTMH), DP: Basic Grey sugared, Ink: Garden Green (CTMH), Stamps: Cake Occasions, Card Categories (CDstamps), Other: Scor tape, Martha Stewart glitter, oval nesties, paper piercer, Ann Griffin corner punch

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Now for my second card.  I wanted this one to be more festive and believe it would definitely work for a little boy's birthday too.  Another simple design for the most part.  I added just a bit of bling with some waterfall stickles and I of course love the look of the Nestabilities Pinking Circles. 

Its like you get to really decorate your own birthday cake.  And trust me, I did that in my former life and its all about the pressure baby!

Recipe: Cardstock: Crystal Blue, Cocoa (CTMH), Pure Poppy (PTI), DP: American Crafts, Ink: Crystal Blue, Black (CTMH), Pure Poppy (PTI), Stamps: Cale Occasions (CDstamps), Other: Nesties, waterfall stickles

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Now, my third and final project is one that I really have fun doing.  I'm sure you all know that gift bags are rather expensive to purchase, especially on the go.  I simply adore just slapping on some pretty designer paper and adding some stamping to get something completely unique.  Here I've take a simple white paper bag (most likely from Walmart or Michaels) and decorated it myself.  Nice bag huh?

Now here is what I consider a refresher or reminder tip, but if its new to you, it is a very handy thing to know.  I have no idea who the originator of this technique was, but it was pure genius!  I have several border punches that I love, but I don't have one that is just a plain one, so I decided to go back to the trick that was all the rage early last year.  Creating your own scallop edge using the corner rounder punch with the guard removed.  Now, in my case, I removed my guard and subsequently lost it - grrr... so what you are looking at is the not quite complete corner rounder.

The key is to flip it over so you can see where you are punching.  I always start in the middle and work my way to the edges.  Its easy to keep it nice and even becuase the edge of your paper will gently rest on the small metal  V at the bottom of the punch.

After you have the first punch done, you'll want to move your punch to the left or right.  They key is to have just a tad bit of the cut part showing when you  punch the next scallop.  And remember to use that metal V as your leveling base.

And one more little mini tutorial for you.  If you've been on the fence about Spellbinder's nestabilities, you should just jump off and get some.  I absolutely love them to pieces.  I wanted to create a quick, small, but cute little tag card for my gift bag, so I made one using one of the scallop circled nesties. 

The key here is to make sure that your nestability hangs over your scored card center ever so slightly.  So cut your piece of cardstock slightly larger (after its been scored - which means you'll be cutting through 2 layers) than your nesty.

And here is the inside of my little tag card attached to my gift bag.  I just punched a hole and tied it with ribbon.

And here is my finished gift bag.  I used the companion stamp set called Cute Confections to create my background on my designer paper.  Another thing I love to do is stamp straight onto paper that already has a pattern to it.  In this case I went monochromatic in theme.  The cake stand, cake, and the little cupcakes are all from the Cake Occasions set.

Recipe:Cardstock: Colonial White, Sorbet, Juniper (CTMH), DP: Special Promotion (CTMH), Ink: Sorbet, Juniper (CTMH), Stamps: Cake Occasions, Cute Confections (CDstamps), Other: Circle and scallop punches, corner rounder, ribbon, circle nesties, hole punch

Well, that's it for me folks.  I hope you enjoyed the paper ride today and I wish you the very best of Tuesdays. 

Signing off for Clearly iStamp Blog,

~Katie

Comments

[Vicki Conquest]

Hey Katie Girl!
Great trick with the corner rounder, I heard about it but have not seen it done, so now I know! Cute idea for stamp combining, I do that a lot as no one single set has it all and the mix and match sizes and styles of fonts is trendy these days. Great little tutorial with lots of great tips!

Vicki C

[vicki woebbecke]

This is stinkin "sweet" (pun intended). Clearly,I will have to go check out more clear dollar stamps. haha no seriously But I am tired and silly tonight.