Double Slider Card & Kailynn's Birthday Invitations

This month has been CRAZY at the Frawley household... on top of all the birthday and anniversaries we have in our family (and all the cards I made for them), I also had two very dear friends come visit me! It's amazing... I love having company, and even moreso, I love having people to stamp with. During the week of my birthday, my friend, Kim, came all the way from Rincon, GA to visit us! She brought her two children, Evan & Morgan, and between the three of mine and the two of her children, chaos was bound to happen, right? For the most part, the kids all got along and played well together.

Kim stayed from Sunday through Friday and then two days later, on Sunday, my BESTEST GIRLIE, PennyO, came & visited through the following Sunday. Both of my friends are stampers and we had a great time giving each other challenges, playing with my toys (stamps & tools, etc) and of course, sharing our creative Mojo!

Penny and I picked tutorials off of Splitcoast to challenge each other and to get the creative juices flowing. One of the challenges Penny gave me was the Double Slider Card. You can find the full tutorial HERE. This card had TEN PAGES of instructions and pictures, and I was overwhelmed at first, but as I started reading the instructions, I realized it wasn't going to be as difficult as I had first thought. I used my Garden Silhouettes stamp set along with a See D's sentiment set that I picked up from Archiver's (on a day trip to Raleigh w/ Penny) for this card. I used my Totally Tabs stamp set to adorn the tab at the top and my scallop circle punch to make it easier to slide the card back down into itself. (It kept getting hung up on the Black cardstock). This is a very simple (stamping-ly speaking) card to do with lots of little technical engineering to make the card "slide" up and down.

The next challenge I got from Penny was the Blurred Watercolor Technique from Splitcoast... You can find the full tutorial HERE. I knew I had to make invitations for my daughter's 4th birthday party. She only has a couple of true "friends," so I only had to make 3... I figured I could go all out & add a shrinkydink charm to it & it wouldn't be too much of a hassle.

I JUST FOUND OUT YOU CAN DO SHRINKYDINKS WITH YOUR HEAT GUN!

Why have my friends been holding out on me? Everyone I have talked to apparently knew you could do this... so why in the world have they neglected to share this GOLDEN little bit of info with me??? Hmmmph.

The background of this card is actually done with the blurred watercolor technique. You can't really see much of it, but it's there. I also used my new stamp from Stamping Bella (it was a bday gift from my PennyO) called "Jumping for Joy." It was perfect for her invitations b/c she's only inviting two friend. I colored the images using my Stampin' Up markers - No, I'm not giving in to copics... they're so expensive & I'm pretty happy with my SU! markers. I used my new Swiss Dots embossing folder for the So Saffron Panel and everything else is pretty basic. To cut the shrinkydink, I used my Scallop punch & then stamped You're Invited (from my Hugs & Wishes stamp set) in the middle. To make it stand out a little more, I added a little doodling around the scallops with my Pixie Pink marker. When you're making charms, don't forget to punch a hole (I used the larger hole on my crop-o-dile) to attach the hardware to make it dangle.

All in all, I'm proud of these cards. So, I'm dying to know... who else didn't know about using your heat gun to shrink those darn shrinkydinks??? Sorry, I just can't get over how easy it is!

Until next time, I'll leave you with a pic of my "baby" on her birthday. She's getting so big!