Keep Calm & Eat a Cupcake

I've had this Fiskars cupcake punch for at least a few years now, and have never really done much--if anything--with it. The current challenge at Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday challenge blog is "Happy Easter and/or Sweet Treats." I figured, what better sweet treat than a cupcake?

I chose Operation Write Home's Sketch #199 as the basis for my design:

I flipped it horizontally, enlarged the squares just a bit to accommodate the cupcakes better, and added a greeting in the large blank space. Otherwise, I kept to the sketch.

First, I punched the cupcake pieces. I used a white glitter paper for the frosting, and brown cardstock for the cake part. I cut squares from 3 colors of cardsock to glue the cupcakes to, and matted them with the same brown cardstock. Then I glued the cake & icing sections to the squares. For cards sent to Operation Write Home, glitter that flakes off is an absolute no-no, because it makes soldiers visible to night-vision goggles. So, to keep the glitter on the icing from coming off, I coated those pieces liberally with Glossy Accents to seal it.

For the main panel on the card, I used a patterned paper from Doodlebug Design's "Take Note" 6x6" pad. Because I wanted to print the greeting directly on the paper, I was careful to choose a small, tone-on-tone pattern. I typed and formatted the greeting in Photoshop, and printed it onto the patterned paper. After lightly inking the edges with Worn Lipstick Distress Ink, I matted the panel with yellow and brown cardstocks. Finally, I glued down the cupcake squares.

The side with the greeting still looked a bit too stark, though, so I decided to add some flourishes. I used two matching dies from Spellbinders' "Ironwork Accents" set to die cut the flourishes from the same white glitter paper I'd used for the cupcakes. Then I adhered them above and below the greeting, and again sealed them with Glossy Accents.

I'm entering this card in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Happy Easter and/or Sweet Treats" challenge.