Sweets to the Sweet

We're rockin' the *SWEETNESS* this fortnight at Shopping Our Stash either literally or figuratively. For "You're So Sweet" you can make a project that includes sweet kiddos, cute pets, adorable baby sentiments etc; OR sweet treats like candy or cupcakes. Guess which I chose, lol?

Here's a little backstory: My friend (& Eyelet Outlet chief) Suzanne Marchesano's mom, Irene Pond, turned ninety a couple of weeks ago. Her kids had been planning a big celebration, naturally, but then this whole fun CoVid19 thing happened instead, and Mrs. Pond's adult community went into lockdown. So Suzanne hit upon the idea of the card-equivalent of a surprise party, and put a call out to papercrafters via FaceBook in hopes of getting *90* greetings sent to her mom. But, nope, that didn't happen. Apparently, Mrs. P. received over 150 cards from all over the country! The local paper even wrote a little feature! This is the sort of story I love to hear, and it confirms my belief that crafters are some of the kindest people in the world. 

Of course I wanted to participate, so I texted Suzanne for a few "hints" to personalize my card. It turned out that Mrs. P. and I share a deep and abiding love for frozen desserts, and as soon as I heard that, I knew I wanted to make a big card with a Nancy Standlee-style collaged ice cream cone. This is a great SOS project, because all of my papers were scraps. The cone is made of paper strips and some fun Eyelet Outlet Tapes. The strawberries are a discontinued brad style that I still love. I finished off with Round Sequin sprinkles and a scatter of tiny Star Sequins in the background.

Be sure to check out the sweet treats from the SOS design team, they are sure to inspire you as much as they inspire me! ♥

shape up, cupcake! ;)

we are doing the dreaded SHAPED CARD challenge at shopping our stash this week, and knowing that some of us automatically click into "round card mode" on these occasions the powers that be (in this case barb who thought up the theme this time!) have declared that NO round or oval cards will count. it has to be a real shaped card! yikes!!! luckily i still had an oversized cupcake template from a year or two ago AND i had an artist inspiration i was longing to try, so i was all set, see?

scraps of every kind of brown, tan and pink patterned paper you could possibly imagine, so i'm not going to name them all, but luckily this would work with ANY more or less monochromatic scraps, so i don't need to; plain white cardstock from staples, run through my xryron machine so that i had a base with smooth dry adhesive, edge to edge. i used a homemade template to make the cupcake shape and drew some pencil guidelines on the icing part to guide my (attempted) "swirl" of icing; i made the cake, icing and cherry as three separate sections, so i could stick them together with 3M foam tape and get a bit of dimension; i stitched around the edges of each piece for some extra texture and frankly just to make sure that all those little tiny pieces STAY ON lol! :)

in the last few months i've kept seeing what nancy standlee calls her "collaged paintings" and every single time i am blown away. this seemed like a good time to take a crack at one of her luscious cupcakes.

the base was easy... just snip strips of brown and tan paper scraps. (because obviously my cupcake was going to be chocolate!) the top was a little more involved; and i never did get the shading quite right around the swirls of icing, but i wound up with a cupcake that actually looks like a cupcake, so i'm callin' this a WIN!

at this juncture, you may be remembering that i often don't bother to make a folded shape card, mine are basically just fancy diecut postcards, lol. but this time, i did fasten a narrow (2.5"ish) folded strip of kraft cardstock to the back of the cake so that it can stand up! (ta-daaaaaaa!)

be sure to hop over to SOS and see the amazing shaped creations my design team darlings have cooked up for you! ♥