Birthday Craftiness

Well, I keep waiting, so patiently, for spring to come, but for some reason we keep getting teased with a sunny day here and a blizzard of snow and cold there!

My big girl just turned 26 on Sunday! She came over with the family - her fiancé, my sister, and my niece to celebrate with supper. Her request - soup. While you may be thinking, ugh, it actually turned out to be a fun, make your own event. Stephanie is vegan, my husband eats Paleo, her fiancé has a nut allergy and of course with a 5 and 2 year old there comes more culinary challenges!

This was probably one of the easier meals I've prepared as everything was separate and people could simply serve themselves.  For ingredients we had rice noodles, red peppers, cooked onions, steamed broccoli slaw, cilantro, barbecued beef, barbecued chicken, soy ''chicken', carrots, sprout, French fried onions, vegetable broth and chicken broth. I set out different kinds of sauces and spices and each person made their own.

For dessert I made vegan oatmeal vanilla cupcakes with Wow Butter icing (which is a peanut butter substitute made with toasted soybeans) and vegan chocolate cookie sandwiches with the same icing in the centre. They were really good! I have not had much success with vegan baking, so I was impressed. The recipe, somewhat modified, was from www.thisrawsomeveganlife.com.

I got inspiration for her cute birthday card from a post on Craftsy by Ready, Set, Love. I sponged Distress Ink around the edge of a Kraft piece of cardstock after rounding the corners and then stamped the bike from an American Crafts stamp set. The sentiment and arrow is from the Simon Says Stamp set included with the February 2014 card kit. I used bakers twine for the balloon strings and stamped a heart outline stamp on patterned papers for the balloons, popping them up with foam tape.

The inside and envelope:

For Stephanie's birthday gifts I wanted to paint her a canvas.  I knew she loved these bright colours and when I saw Vicky Papaioannou's beautiful art journal page I just knew it would be perfect made into a canvas! I used acrylic paints on the background and cut the balloons and clouds out of patterned paper, highlighting them with Gelatos and using Mod Podge to apply them to the canvas.  The star stencil is from Heidi Swapp and I used homemade texture paste. I cut the letters out with the Kate's ABC's Cricut cartridge and used a white gel pen to add highlights to the word SKY.

Steph loved it!

For her second gift I made a rag doll modified from a pattern in the Create and Decorate magazine. She's got little stripy legs and I gave her red yarn hair with piggy tales.  I painted the nose and mouth on and added button eyes.

All in all it was a fun birthday for my girl! It makes you realize how quick time flies and to appreciate everyday you have with your little ones :)

Challenges:
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Anything Goes
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Birthday
DL Art Thankful Thursday April Linky Challenge
Just B Creative Crazy April Linky Challenge

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Happy Crafting!

Karla