Spring Birthdays & Templates

Calorie-free cake, using Playful Pockets template

Spring is the busiest time of the year for birthdays in our family. Great reason/excuse to spend time at the craft table. Today I am featuring another product from one of my fave craft-supply companies, Paper Wishes: Templates.  They are designed and produced in-house (made in America!) Templates are much less expensive than dies, and if you don't mind spending a little more time and using your scissors (its therapeutic!) they are a great option.

The design for this card was copied directly from the Paper Wishes website, and uses the fabulous double-sided paper pack "Kaleidoscope," and the "Playful Pockets" template. The lower cake layer is a pocket that could hold a gift-card or extra greeting. The sentiment stamp is "birthday4you" from The Stamps of Life; Stickles on the candle; all other supplies, Paper Wishes.

Here's a look at the template: it is translucent so you can see exactly where you are placing it, on patterned paper (here its been placed on black paper so you can see the cut-away areas). You just place the template over your paper or card-stock, trace the outline with a pencil through the slits provided, then cut it out. To create the pockets, just fold on the lines indicated. This works particularly well with the double-sided paper--no need to cover the white/back with more paper. There are plenty of instructions and designs ideas included on the template, as well.


This second card uses the Layered Labels template,
the Celebration papier tole and the  Confetti paper pack.

One nice detail about the Paper Wishes paper packs is that they provide a free download of coordinated tags and labels that you can print out at home, to use on your card and scrapbook projects.
Again with this design, I shamelessly copied a project from the website (this was made during my recuperation from a week-long illness--not feeling capable of originality...). The scalloped circle is a Nestabilities die.











Here's a look at the inside of the card:  more use of the Layered Labels template, "pink sorbet" twine from The Twinery, extra artwork from the papier tole sheet and sentiment stamp from The Stamps of Life.

A peak at the different designs on the Layered Labels template, and the dimension on the front of the card.

So there's my plug for non-technical tools! I love my Cricut and Big Shot, but sometimes can scissors do the job as well.