I was involved in a Spring Mini swap with a great group of girls in August - although I was only able to post my swaps mid-September due to our life being thrown into chaos.... Here's what I put together:
In these swaps I like to try and use a stamp set that may be one of the 'outsiders' - you know the ones that are great, but not everyone immediately falls in love with them. So for this one I used Introducing. I love it because I am expecting a little niece or nephew in November and will use it to make announcements for my sister, but it also has some classic invite stamps (I also used it for Luana's invitations this year). I also fell in love with the giant cupcake that is Simple Birthday Thanks, and thought I could show that it can be used for more than a thank you....
Quite straight forward - a little bit of masking (to take 'off' the thank you writing), a little bit of paper piecing - the chocolate dots are courtesy of the crop-o-dile - and a little bit of glitter.
The other swaps I've received have been great too - thank you for swapping with me!!
Card: Certainly Celery, Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Regal Rose
Other: Crop-o-dile, Chunky Glitter, toothpick (non SU!), Tombo glue pen, sticky strip, glue dots
I wanted to keep the invited relatively straightforward, and the new Introducing stamp set from the Spring Mini was just begging to be used. I paper pieced the balloon from Crazy for Cupcakes with Sweet Always DSP, and despite my wanting this to be straightforward, I stamped one little cupcake from the cupcake tower in the same set three times on Pink Pirouette (icing), Pumpkin Pie (base) and Regal Rose (cherry) before fussy cutting it and putting it together. Stamping and using blender pens to colour just didn't work for me...
Luana had chosen a Bluh-fly (Butterfly) birthday cake, so I just had to pull out Bold Butterfly for her card. I used the Flitting By wheel on her first birthday invitations. I stamped off the solid base of the butterflies and flowers and stamped the outline detail in first generation, adding some sparkle to the butterflies (3 of course!). Clear rhinestone brads finished off the 3 flowers. I used second generation Pink Pirouette with the flower outline to add a bit of interest to the Whisper White circle the chipboard 3 was mounted on. The 3 was covered with Bella Rose DSP, the edges were sanded and inked with Chocolate Chip before mounting. After trying a few different cards, I was quite happy with this one!
Here's our family pic from the big day - I kept with the pink and orange theme for the cake too!! Luana loved it - what more can you ask for?! 
