Birthday Subway Art Card by Laura

Hello, crafty friends! Laura here today, and I’ve got two cards to share with you. I originally bought the Catherine Pooler Happy Birthday Many Ways Stamp because you can never have enough birthday sentiments, am I right? But, when I really looked at the packaging, I realized it looked like subway art. You know, the art prints that use lots of words to create a beautiful design? I liked the idea so much I came up with two cards today! Let’s get started and I’ll explain how easy it was to create these fun birthday cards.

SUBWAY ART STAMPING

As I said earlier, the layout was already done for me when it arrived on the packaging, so that was easy. In the photo on the (lower) left, you’ll see what the stamp looks like on the carrier sheet (minus a small ‘wishing you a’ sentiment I easily removed since it was at the very top.) As shown in the second picture, I turned the stamp over and removed the carrier sheet from the back of the stamps. I say this because, in order to stick them all to my stamping platform in the exact same shape/design, I needed the backs of the stamps to be exposed, thus sticking them the correct way inside my stamping platform.

Before I could put in my stamping platform, there was one more small sentiment I wanted to remove from the sheet. So, I took out ‘to you’ sentiment, and moved the very bottom happy birthday up slightly to tighten up the space. I also cut a tiny bit of the corner off (see where I’m pointing in the left photo) allowing it a better fit. Always be careful when trimming your stamps so you don’t cut into the actual stamp!

Then I put the whole sheet of stamps (carefully) down into my stamping platform and closed the lid. I carefully removed the carrier sheet (and viola!) my stamps were ready to go!

STAMPING

For the lilac colored card, I used mini ink pads to achieve the various shades of purple on each of the different sentiments. They were perfectly sized to ink only the sentiments I wanted each time. Even so, for those I was worried about, I used a scrap piece of paper to cover any stamps I didn’t want inked in that colour. I could have inked the stamps in their various colours and stamped them all at once, but I wanted to make sure I could take my time and get good coverage, so I chose to ink and stamp each shade of colour on its own.

CLEANING STAMPS

In between each colour, I used the amazing Brutus Monroe Squeaky Clean Stamp Cleaner to ensure there was no ink residue for the next round of stamps. I do recommend if you do this method, start with the lightest shade and work your way up just in case there’s ink you missed when cleaning the stamp. And, make sure the newly cleaned stamp is completely dry so it doesn’t get the stamped image smudged.

DIECUT BALLOONS

With my panel all stamped, I took a balloon die from my stash, and cut balloons into the design. I also cut the same balloons out of purple craft foam, and a few strings from a pale lavender card that matched one of the inks perfectly! I added my stamped panel to (just over) 4.25” x 5.5” lilac card with Tombow. Next I glued down the balloon string die cuts, then adhered the balloons with red liner tape. I could’ve just as easily used Scor Tape, but I need to order more so I used what I had in my stash. I placed the respective balloons back in place and that was that card done!

BONUS CARD

The red and Navy card was even easier to pull together. I stamped central greetings first, then added clear embossing powder, and heat set to give it a bit of extra pop. I also removed the stamp from the stamping platform since I didn’t need it anymore. Then I stamped the sentiments in red all with one close of the lid.

EMBOSSED BALLOONS

I wanted a more masculine feel for the card so I chose to emboss the balloons for a more subtle look. I LOVE the way it turned out. Since there are overlapping parts, you can’t emboss everything at once but re-running the panel through the die machine can cause the deep embossing to flatten a bit. My solution was to do the balloons first, then the strings. I went back in and pressed the balloons again with my fingers. They were large and simple enough to line up in the same place. I also pressed the balloon highlights in with my fingers but I could’ve run them through when I ran the strings through but I didn’t think about it.

FINISHING THE CARD

I cut a piece of navy cardstock to be (slightly more than) 4.25” x 5.5” and trimmed my stamped panel down just a bit all the way around. Next I cut a piece of red craft foam to be slightly smaller than the birthday panel, and adhered to the top panel with red liner tape. Then adhered that to the navy base.

SENTIMENT

Last, I used one of those smaller sentiments (I removed earlier) and embossed it in white, onto a bit of navy card. I cut that into a flag and added to the panel with more red craft foam. And that’s, that!

I hope you got a bit of inspiration today from these two cards. I think both cards look striking and creative, even though we didn’t design the image/word layout.

Well, that’s all for today…

See y’all next time! xo