More Papertrey Ink April Release: Cuddly Cats Dies, Flower Mandalas II, Ways to Say Birthday and Initial Sentiments Birthday!

Hey friends! Welcome back to day three of my introduction of all the new Papertrey Ink April Release projects and products! Thanks for joining with me during this fun week of sharing and creating! I've been having fun showing you everything and sharing all the projects I've been working on. The release went live last Saturday. CLICK HERE to see all the new items. You might want to grab a cup of coffee (or a pot of coffee) since I have FIVE projects to share today! What??? FIVE? Yep, you heard that right! (You may have seen a few of these projects already on my featured post last week) Everything featured today is all about birthdays – cards, packages and tags. I now have a great stash of bday cards at my house. You can never have enough bday cards right? That is the number one occasion I make cards for – how about you? There are lots of new stamps and dies to pick from at Papertrey Ink for birthday crafting. Let's get started!

First up is a birthday card I made with the new Cuddly Cat Dies! EEEEP! This is the cutest die set ever! I used bright and happy colors for this one!  

I started with a card base made from Soft Stone cardstock. I layered a piece of crisp white cardstock on top. For my focal point (the kitty) I die cut two white circles and layered them. This helped him to not be 'floating around' out there in all that white space. I use this trick a lot on my clean and simple cards. It adds interest, without adding another color to the mix. 

Next I got out lots of my favorite colors of cardstock and die cut all the pieces out. Once the pieces were cut out, I used Copic Markers to add accents to the fish, the flowers, and the cat's stripes. This is a great trick for adding extra pizzazz to cardstock die cuts. I used my tweezers to glue all the little pieces together. The fishy is attached to his tummy with foam tape. For the sentiment I white heat embossed onto a strip of Smoky Shadow cardstock and attached it to the card with foam tape. I sprinkled the flowers around the cat and then added enamel dots at the very end. 

Next up is a pretty gift box topper I made with the gorgeous and luxurious Papertrey Ink felt! YUM. It cuts like a dream in my Big Shot. I used the brand new Flower Mandalas II dies set and created a lovely flower for the top of a birthday gift. I love to jazz up a birthday box. I also used some of the small elements from the Mandala to adorn a crisp white matching tag. This project was part of my pre-release featured post so CLICK HERE to read more about it!

For the next birthday card I used some of the small elements from the Flower Mandalas II dies to create yellow tulip accents! Another clean and simple card, this time with beautiful Bright Buttercup yellow! I used the new Ways to Say Birthday stamp set and the Happy Birthday Die to make the greeting. Black and yellow always look nice together. I started with a yellow card base and layered crisp white. This card was also on my post last week! CLICK HERE to read how I made this card!

Are you still with me? Two more cards to go!! Next up is a BRIGHT and happy birthday wishes card using the Ways to Say Birthday stamp set and Happy Birthday Die. I started with a white card base and layered Pure Poppy and then white again for the card layers. Then I randomly stamped birthday wishes in all the colors of the rainbow! I finished with die cutting the happy birthday die twice and layering it for a shadow effect. CLICK HERE to read my previous post about this card!

And lastly a classic birthday card in a classic color combination with watercoloring! This card started with a Classic Kraft card base and then layers of Blueberry Sky paper and crisp white paper. There is a strip of vellum across the center of the two layers.

I stamped and heat embossed Happy Birthday several times on a strip of plain vellum and wrapped it around the colored layers before attaching that part to the card base with foam tape. Then I stamped and white heat embossed the HB onto a die cut circle of watercolor paper. I used two shades of Distress Ink to watercolor the circle to match the blue cardstock. I dried this part with my heat tool and the attached it with foam tape. 

Whew! Thank you for reading all the way to the end! I hope you can sense my excitement to share with you! I feel so fortunate to be part of the PTI Design Team! This is only my third month and I love it already. The other design team ladies are so wonderful and kind. It's a blessing to be sure. I will be back with one final post tomorrow so please come visit. Be sure to stop over at the Official Papertrey Ink Blog for more inspiration. Have a great day! XOXO