How to Make a Card POP!

Here is a card I made for Gina K's gallery, I just love how it turned out! My stamp set had just arrived and I was out looking for some fun embellishments (those heart brads I mentioned before, etc) and found these really cool lollipops at Michael's. They were 39 cents each and came with a long, I mean LONG! plastic stick, I'm talking 18 inches or so! (they are meant for candy bouquets) I grabbed a few , knowing they'd be perfect for my tails if I trimmed then down(which was very simple with my craft scissors, the "stick" was a hollow tube) The cheaper suckers you find would work, too, but they have those square shaped wrappers with the crimped sides to seal them, and I really liked this smooth cello wrap that could be tied with a ribbon, much more appealing visually when attached to a card(It came with the silver twist tie, I added the polka dot bow) I removed the wrapper first and trimmed off just the bottom of it that had a bit of writing on it, leaving just the thin red edge to echo my read mat. I stamped right on the wrapper with the "hey baby"* greeting from this set using Palette Noir ink. I knew this ink was for all surfaces, but I did not realize until I did this that it does have to be heat set on plastic, so this is important. I used my heat gun on for only a second maybe to keep from melting the cello or pop. I thought it turned out so cute!

Not, how does the tail wrap around the stick?? Originally I was going to make a hole above and below to thread it through, but this giraffe was stamped in two stages, with the back half (which is facing you) cut out and POPped it up on dimensionals. It may be difficult to see in this pic, but separating the hales really makes a cool effect since he's turned around (I like separating the face and the hippo's body in this way, too) I used a tiny bit of glue on the tail and a glue dot and under the pop. This was a much better solution than punching the holes because it actually looks like he's holding the stick AND his body is 3-D! Glad I spent a little extra time, it was worth it!

Now for the final bit of "Pop", I added the punched greeting and heart brads to pick up his heart pattern and to fill the white space around the greeting. I inked up the hippy separately to use with the (happy) Valentine's day stamp. (The reason we went ahead and did Happy Valentine's Day was to make this greeting more versatile if you are using it with other stamps that aren't quite as "hippy", but it's easily omitted to combine with a hippy from the birthday stamp. Just in case you wondering..! ;) The polka dotted ribbon brings out the pattern in the background DP.


I plan on making these using all the animal from the set for my son's classmates (a simpler version, though! probably just one or two layers) Hope you enjoy this idea! Please share any pics of cards you try like this in the SCS gallery, I'd love to see!


HIP TIP! Here's a super easy way to color the giraffe stamp: if you choose a body color LIGHTER than the hearts spots(or similar colors ex yellow and red, pink and purple etc), you can go over the entire image with this one color, then go back and fill in the hearts with your darker color. (Saves the time and trouble of having to go AROUND each and every little heart.)

Materials used: Just So Hippy, Michael's lollipop, Real red and Shimmery White CS, Saffron designer prints DP, scallop and circle punches, heart brads

* I love this greeting! It can be SO sweet and innocent, but SO NOT! ;)