A bunch of Birthday Stacks

I need to catch up on posting some cards I made a long time ago, so today I'm sharing a bunch of cards made with the Birthday Stacks stamp set (Concord & 9th). The stamp images include rows of four different shapes -- candles, triangles (pennants or party hats), circles (balloons or ice cream), and presents. You can also get coordinating dies that allow you to make cool, dimensional cards, but I decided to skip the dies and just focus on the stamped images for these cards.

For the candle image, I created two cards by repeatedly stamping the row of candles to make a background; one of the cards was stamped with black ink on white card stock, and the other was  tone-on-tone with the same color ink and card stock for a more subtle look. I added splatter, a sentiment, and a few embellishments to finish the cards. For the third card, I stamped a single row of candles in the middle of a piece of white card stock. I used the fill-in images from the stamp set to add color to the candles, then stamped a sentiment underneath and finished with three clear droplets.

For the triangle image, I created one card with pennants and one card with party hats. To make the pennants I curved the stamp before placing it on an acrylic block. Then I stamped the image three times on a piece of white card stock. For the party hats, I used a stamp-alignment tool to stamp the straight row of triangles five times on white card stock. I also stamped the little pom-pom image at the top point of each triangle for the hats. For both cards I used the fill-in stamps to add the color to the images. I finished the cards with sentiments and enamel dots.

For the circle image, I created one card with ice cream cones and one with balloons. (The stamps for the cones and balloon strings are also part of the stamp set.) For the card with ice cream cones I wanted to add a little white to the ice cream after I had stamped the solid fill-in circle, so I used a white paint pen to color in some of the stripes and dots (maybe it's strawberry swirl ice cream?). I embellished each card with some small clay circles to look like confetti.

The presents were surprisingly the hardest image for me to use. For one of my cards I went very clean and simple by stamping a row of the presents near the bottom of a white card base. I stamped the solid square in different colors to create a rainbow of presents, added splatter, a sentiment and a few sequins. For the second card I went back to the tone-on-tone technique I used with the candles, but it's really hard to see on the red card stock. This closer shot makes it a little clearer:

Once the background was done, I struggled with how to finish the card. Finally I settled on using gold accents, so I added gold splatter and a die-cut gold border and sentiment. The final detail was three red enamel dots. (To be honest, this was my least favorite card of the bunch. I think the red was just too much.)

Thanks for stopping by!