Mater Birthday Card

My nephew that just turned three loves Cars and Mater. I wanted to do something a little different (well, different to me!) for the background, so I used a couple of papers from the Bo Bunny "On the Go" 6x6 paper pack. The card is 5.5 x 8.5", so I cut two strips of each paper 5 x 2". I decided to offset them, since sometimes I have trouble cutting pieces all the exact same size and was afraid they wouldn't line up (they would have only been maybe a 32nd of an inch off, but it bugs me).

I cut Mater from the Cars cartridge at 4", and used a VersaMark ink pad with Zing! black embossing powder to emboss the wheels. The speech bubbles were cut using Plantin SchoolBook. They were cut out of white textured cardstock, then I used my brayer and AC Brown Sugar ink to color them.

I used my tiny letter stamps to spell "dagum", and "Another birthday? It's like an annual event for you!" comes from the "Inside & Out" stamp set from My Craft Spot.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful weekend!

Mater Invitations

My sister-in-law asked me to make invitations for her boys' birthday party, and asked for me to put either Lightening McQueen or Mater on them. Since it was for both boys, I thought it would be cute to have Mater towing a 3 and a 1 and stamp the boys' names on their respective ages. She loved the idea, so I went with it! I did the same background as I did with Bug's invites, just on a larger scale. 

The invitations were 8.5 x 5.5", so the brown paper was cut to 8 x 3", and the blue was cut to 8 x 2". I cut the road to 8 x 2" as well, and trimmed a little off the top side to angle it. I then used my American Crafts White Galaxy Marker (with a ruler, of course!) to draw the center lines.

I used the Cricut Cars cartridge to cut Mater at 3.5". The white (well, it's not really white, it's more of a beige or ecru) of his eyes and side window were cut out of white and colored with Copics, mostly to save paper! I embossed the tires with Zing! embossing powder after I put all the pieces through the Xyron (that was definitely a lot easier than holding each individual piece with tweezers while using the heat gun!). I used Plantin SchoolBook to cut the one and three, and some mini clear stamps to stamp the boys' names on the numbers. To attach them to the twine, I just used my smallest hole punch and threaded the twine through them and knotted it behind the numbers. I used glue dots to adhere the numbers to the page and the twine behind the hook on Mater's tow cable.

The back of the invite is very simple, just a stamp and "Off road Mayhem" cut from the Cars cartridge at 2". 

I hope you enjoyed the invitations! I apologize for the quality of the pictures - I used my phone to take the pictures and didn't get a chance to use my good camera before I delivered the invites! 

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great evening!

Cars Party Decorations

For Bug's party, I made a couple of banners, a centerpiece, and several signs that I printed and laminated and hung around the house.

I had trouble finding black and white checkered paper, so I found some digital paper online and printed several sheets. I cut several flags from Party Picks and Pennants, and then seven large pennants by hand to put his name on. The "Happy Birthday" banner is cut from Cars and Alphalicious. I cut the route sign in black (I think) at 3.5" and the checkered pattern at 3.25"

For the centerpiece, I cut several of the Cars characters at about 2 inches and glued them on to wooden skewers. I do not recommend cutting the characters this small, because they have many tiny pieces that are easy to lose and difficult to piece together! I used Cricut Craft Room to weld together Bug's name (using Plantin SchoolBook), but ended up needing to reinforce the "a" and the "m" with a toothpick because the area where they were joined was very thin and didn't stay upright like the rest of the letters. If I had more time to re-do the welding and cut his name out again, I would push the letters much closer together! Lesson learned!

Cameron's cake was INCREDIBLE, but I can't take credit for it! One of my good friends made and decorated the cake for him, and I just placed several of the flags (that had been glued on toothpicks) and a banner on which I hand-wrote "Happy Birthday, Cameron!" and glued to wooden skewers.

I also purchased Cars characters to place on the road shaped like a "3." Bug was excited to have new cars!

Thanks for stopping by! Stay tuned for Mater birthday party invitations that were made for my nephews! Have a great day!