Cinco de Mayo 2017 was yesterday, May 5th, but I think it can be celebrated all weekend here in Houston! One way to celebrate would be to make a Margarita Card for Cinco de Mayo!  For those of us who love Mexican food, I guess you could say we celebrate it almost everyday. Actually, my brother and I celebrated a day early at my favorite Mexican restaurant (well, one of them!) and boy, did we enjoy our dinner! More about that later.

In honor of Cinco de Mayo (yesterday) I found this delicious margarita card I made a few years ago!  To make a Margarita, use our Stampin’ Up! Vellum Cardstock. Vellum cardstock is a little sturdier than “just” vellum so it is better to work with to make the margarita glass.  Just cut a circle for the glass, a thin stem from the scrap and punch a small oval.  You can use punches or dies, whatever you have that works. Cut off a portion of the top of the circle to make the shape of glass you want. There’s no good way to hide your adhesive under vellum so do the best you can. I used Sticky Strip on this card, but now we have Tear & Tape Adhesive.  You could also try sponging on small bits of the Multipurpose Liquid Glue which might not show very much,

To make the margarita glass, sponge on some green ink on the underside of the vellum. Make it as light or dark as you like. I left a border to look like the glass. For the “salt” on the margarita, spread a line of adhesive or use the Tear & Tape again and sprinkle on some glitter if you have some, particularly if you have some of the retired Chunky Glitter. Or you can have your margarita without salt!

Now if you are not into margaritas, you can use the same technique to make a regular shaped glass of lemonade or punch or anything you want. Just color the backside of the glass with whatever color drink you want to portray – or even layers of different colors for a fancy drink!

My brother surprised me the other day! We don’t get to see each other often enough at all as he lives in Wichita, KS, but on rare occasions his company has him fly a small plane down here for one reason or another or to test one for a customer. Thank goodness for cellphones and perhaps a bit of obsessiveness because when I finished with an appointment Thursday afternoon I checked my cellphone before driving home. There was a text from my brother asking if I was home and then told me he was in Houston! I didn’t know if that meant for five more minutes at the airport or if I could go see him for a little while or if he could come to my house for a visit.  Thankfully it meant the plane was not ready and he and the other pilot had to stay overnight. I picked him up at the hotel and brought him to my house where  we looked through some old scrapbooks of my mother’s, our grandparents confirmation and marriage certificates, and bunches of old family photos from great-parents to our own children!

Finally we decided to go for dinner at Pappasito’s and had delicious fajitas and shrimp and chips & salsa! It looked like quite the feast! No margaritas, though, only paper ones, since I still had lots of driving to do!

You can get papercrafting and stamping supplies for your projects, whether Cinco de Mayo or other occasions, at my Stampin’ Up! Online Store HERE!

The Eastern Palace Suite offers so many creative opportunities for you in your cardmaking and other papercrafting projects. I got the idea for this Eastern Palace Medallion Blue and Gold Card from another Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator that I saw online and just changed the paper and the greeting a little bit. This card uses a lot of elements that are in the Eastern Palace Premier Bundle. This Bundle may seem expensive, but you get all the pieces in the Suite PLUS a free gift of the new THICK Very Vanilla cardstock and envelopes. You will get three of the new ink and cardstock In Colors as well – Fresh Fig, Lemon Lime Twist, and Tranquil Tide. Besides the coordinating stamp set, Eastern Beauty, you get the cute Eastern Gold Vinyl Stickers and Mini Tassels Assortment.  The stickers are not your ordinary stickers – they are heavy duty and die cut pretty closely to the design so you have less of the excess border.  Really nice, and so pretty to add to your card.

The card is actually made with Very Vanilla cardstock as the base, with the fold at the top and then a layer cut 5 1/2″ x 4″.  The designer paper is a piece with gold foil in the Eastern Palace Specialty Designer Series Paper. When you see the word “Specialty” within the title of designer paper, that means there are probably two sheets in the package with gold foil or some special coating or design. Those two sheets are usually not double-sided like the other sheets. Beside the strip of blue & gold designer paper I added a strip of the gold vinyl stickers. The ribbon is the Gold 1/4″ Natural Trim which goes perfectly with this Suite and the tassel is tied on with a piece of the Gold 1/8″ Ribbon.  This ribbon has been around for years and is so useful! It also comes in Silver.

The medallion on the front of the card is die cut with the beautiful Eastern Medallions Thinlits Dies after being stamped with a matching image in the Eastern Beauty Photopolymer Stamp Set. For the medallion center, I placed a gold sticker on a piece of Very Vanilla scrap and punched with a 1/2″ Circle Punch and then adhered to the medallion center. The greeting and other little decorations around the medallion are also in the stamp set. I love that greeting to add to many cards!

Shop the Stampin’ Up! Eastern Palace Suite and see which Bundle works for you!

Doesn’t everyone love a shaker card?  I think it brings out the child in us! It is so fun to move the card back and forth to see the movement of the beads or confetti or whatever the contents in the window are! Shaker cards are really easy to make and certainly fun.

First I made the card base with a piece of Peekaboo Peach cardstock folded in half.  I chose Peekaboo Peach because it is one of the coordinating colors of the Tasty Treats Specialty Designer Series Paper that I had already chosen to use. I die cut a circle in the designer paper for the window with the Layering Circle Framelits Dies or perhaps you could use a punch if you had the right size. Then I cut a piece of Whisper White cardstock to go behind the window on which I would stamp a greeting. I think a smaller greeting would have been a better choice.  I used the Watercolor Words Stamp Set for the greeting and the flowers on my card. A greeting this large made it a little difficult to make sure it was placed just right to show through the window. You’ll also need a piece of Window Sheet (or some piece of plastic like a transparency sheet) to adhere on the back of the window. After the window sheet is in place, place the Foam Adhesive Strips completely around the hole on the back of the window.  This forms the “well” where you will put your shaker pieces. For my card, I added the Sprinkles Embellishments in the Occasions Catalog and a few miscellanous sequins that I think are retired but I had handy. Next, peel off the adhesive strip on top of the foam strips and place the stamped white background piece over the window. This is tricky because you are doing it from the backside without seeing how it lines up. Once that is adhered, add some more Foam Strips or Dimensionals around the back of the window layer to hold that layer up all around the edge the same as the window.  Adhere to card base.  And there you have your Shaker Card! It just takes making one to get the hang of it!

The Watercolor Words flowers are stamped and cut out by hand with my Paper Snips. I just adhered those to the front of the card around the shaker window. Another tip is that you don’t want too much in your shaker window or it obscures your greeting or image and doesn’t move around as well. And if you don’t have the Foam Adhesive Strips yet, you can substitute the edge strips from the Dimensionals, just make sure you don’t leave any open spaces!

Try making a fun Shaker Card! You can also have the front of the card flat and the shaker area inside the card.  Just cover with another layer of cardstock to make it look pretty on the inside!

If you need any Foam Adhesive Strips, Sprinkles Embellishments, or other sequins and materials to make a Shaker Card, just order at my Stampin’ Up! Online Store!

Sometimes it is a good idea to make some generic cards to have on hand so you are ready for almost any occasion. In this case, I have a butterly work of art card!
To make this generic card, I used Pool Party cardstock for the card base and layered it with So Saffron for an accent. The Whisper White layer is stamped, lightly, with various swaths of color with the Work of Art image.  I used So Saffron, PInk Pirouette, Pool Party, and Calypso Coral ink. This provides a generic background but has color and interest in it.  The gold foil butterfly I found in my scraps! It was die cut with the Butterflies Thinlits Dies and the Big Shot. I added a few Pearl Basic Jewels on the butterfly for a little more accent. For the ribbon embellishment, I thought the Sale-A-Bration ribbon (retired) with the gold accents would be good for this card.

After you have some generic cards made, you will be ready to pull out a card for almost any occasion when you need one at the last minute. Add a greeting if you like or leave it without. Another way to add a greeting is to stamp a generic one, like “Just For You” or “Thinking of You”, something like that. Here’s an example of another card I made that could be considered generic and could be used for birthday, thinking of you, a written note, get well, congratulations, etc.

Look through the catalog and choose some stamp sets that could help you make generic cards. Flowers are probably always good but there are many others.

(Something is making my blog post push all the paragraphs together so I will have to find a way to fix this issue, just know I’m not trying to make my post difficult for you to read!)

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