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OK folks – I have never written a tutorial before and when Patricia asked me I could not say no, but admittedly I was (still am) a little intimidated by this task. But I’ll give it my best shot to walk you through this cute little set for grandma and if you have any questions, feel free to ask! I’m a talker in case you didn’t know, so this is more conversational than step-by-step clinical, you know…..but it’s super easy and again, feel free to ask questions!

Let’s start with grandma’s card. I cut my 8.5×11 White Felt Grandee in half lengthwise at 4.25 because I knew with the balloons I would need this to be a tall card. Scored the paper at 5.5. You probably know all that stuff. I then cut some Pink Lemonade Pop Tones paper to 4-1/8 and 5-5/8 and glued that on with my handy dandy AdTech glue runner. I wanted something fun instead of lacey and frilly so I cut a piece of Pearl Vellum to 4-1/8 by about 1.5 inches and then used my Fiskars paper punch; glued that down. I layered a 4-1/8 x about 1.5 inch piece of Aquamarine Metallic Text on it so that I could stamp a long, thin sentiment and then on top of that I layered some fun dot ribbon that I got on clearance at Craft Warehouse. To make this card more “crafty” I stitched a fun pattern around the top edges. Next step was to get my sentiments on – Papertrey Ink sentiments for both the top and the bottom. And now it was time for the BALLOONS – do balloons not scream birthday? I punched 3 balloons with my Martha Stewart balloon punch in Pink Lemonade Pop Tones, Lemon Drop Pop Tones and Emerald Metallic Text and then I did a couple of things for the string treatment. I put a Zot dot on the bottom back of each balloon and then laid some thick coat string on top of it with the string coming down the bottom center of the balloon and then I put a dimensional in the middle of the balloon but overlapping the Zot dot a little for extra security. I pulled my strings all down together and tied them in a little knot and then punched a bow with my Martha Stewart bow punch in Wild Cherry Pop Tones and adhered that with another little Zot dot right over the knot. And then I cut the strings to dangle down together at all one length. My card looked OK here, but it needed something. I really wanted my balloons to pop – figuratively speaking 😉 – so I put some Glossy Accents over the pink and the yellow – the emerald one had pop all of it’s own with the metallic shimmer. I debated on whether or not to add the bling strip at the bottom but I felt like that one layer end between the aquamarine and the vellum needed something, and besides, grandma’s love bling!

Grandma’s notebook was super easy: working with scraps from the matching card. I used Tombow glue (the green and white bottle) to adhere some Pink Lemonade Pop Tones to the front and back and then trimmed off the excess. You really need to invest in a good pair of scissors – I have a little pair of Singer ones that are super sharp and for big ones I have the Martha Stewart ones. Then I just worked with my scraps from the card – I had a teeny piece of the scalloped border and didn’t want it to go to waste (I waste nothing) so I put that down to have a little extra sticking out and it would help carry the theme. Then I used a piece of Aquamarine Metallic Text and cut off the excess again, next I layered some remnant ribbon and trimmed that too. I decided to use a flower here because I needed something in the corner to cover up the border piece edge because it was too small to go the same width as the aquamarine piece. So I used my flower Nesties and made a flower and topped it with a Foofala button with some coat thread tied on (I really believe that if you are using buttons, you need to thread them…unless you are using a lot and it’s a complete pain, but I think it gives it a more finished and crafty look). The flower and the button again are adhered with Zot dots. I stamped the sentiment in the top corner and it just felt a little naked to me. I’m still not sure about the bling that I used – new stuff from Prima – but again: grandma loves bling!

Grandma’s candy tin was easy peasy too! The little tin was one of those clearance things that you buy and swear you’ll use for something (I have a box of like 20 of these little guys now) and all I did was cut a strip of Pink Lemonade Pop Tones about 1.5 inches wide by about 10 inches in length (better to have too much than not enough) and I put a little piece of tacky tape on the bottom, and pulled the paper up and around each side and then adhered the top with tacky tape as well. I used a Marvy Uchida circle punch to get that Lemon Drop Pop Tones circle, adhered that with a dimensional for some height, made another Nesties flower in Emerald Metallic Text, adhered that with a dimensional and then I found a bright fuschia Doodlebug glitter button that I tied with coat thread and adhered with a Zot dot. Oh! And I filled this with leftover Valentine m&ms BEFORE I ran my paper around it…I used just the pink and white m&ms and left out the red ones so that it didn’t look totally leftover Valentiney 😉