i love birthdays

Yes, it's quite true: I love birthdays!*

(* = anyone else's birthday except for my own!)

I think birthdays are my favorite holiday, yes, sometimes more than Christmas. I think it's the best time to celebrate someone's existence, and it provides the best excuse for showering someone with gifts and sugary sweets like cupcakes. :)

I also find that I am faced with an unusually huge amount of birthdays during the summertime. I found myself needing 6 birthday cards around mid-June for some very dear coworkers and friends, so I decided to raid my stash of card making supplies and create some fun cards. The biggest find was a pile of alphabet stickers that I had been meaning to use on scrapbook layouts, but I bought them before I was hit with "scrapper's block" (think writer's block) so they've just been collecting dust in my crafting room. So here are the six cards I put together for some very special friends:

The first one was created for Antoinette, my carpool buddy. I know, I didn't end up using alphabet stickers on the card itself but I found a chipboard letter to use instead. I did end up using the alphabet stickers on the envelope and man, her name took up all my t's!

I put a restaurant gift card on the inside of the card and thought my A Muse stamp that says "have a delicious day!" was the perfect sentiment for it. The funny thing is that I traced the outside of the gift card and tried to do a mock version underneath the real thing, but my drawing skills suck and I botched that idea. Oh well. (LOL)

This card was for my stepmom, Debbie, and as you can see I did use some fun letter stickers here. These are by American Crafts and have a leathery feel to them. And of course, I love the green color!

Again, I didn't use the stickers on this card but I was having fun using them on the envelopes. I used a bee theme with Jess's card because she wants to be a beekeeper. Yes, she really does! :)

And then on the flipside, I used the letter stickers on both the card and envelope for my friend Kathleen's husband, Matt. I love those puffy stickers for some reason. They just glow with cheeriness.

This was a fun "look who's turning 30" card for my coworker, Nathan. (Duh, you can read the envelope, huh? Sorry about that.)

And last (but definitely not least) is this little one I put together for my friend Jennifer who - can you guess it? - is a fellow Cancer baby. I used my crab and cupcake punches for this one. I forgot to take a photo of the envelope before I gave it to her but I used the pink alphabet stickers on it. I ran out of e's before I realized it and resorted to using a number 3 the wrong way instead.

I just received a huge order of stamps that I bought after Papertrey Ink's July release so I hope to get back into the swing of things with cardmaking. There are so many ideas swimming through my mind these days but it's been a struggle to actually get the mojo enough to make these ideas happen. Stay tuned ... more crafting posts will hopefully come soon!