Princess Birthday Cake

Here's the second Pop up Cake card I made, this one for dd's birthday. She celebrated her 25th birthday this year, but to dh and myself, she is and always will be our little princess. I admit, it was a lot more fun decorating this cake than the golf one I had done for dh because I could go all out girly with it.

Ran into the same "bulky card problem" as with dh's card and used the same matchbook style closure. This time I used a layered filigree heart cut from the Wedding Solutions cart as the tab to keep the card closed. Printed and glittered card stock is from the Sparkly Sweet stack by K & Company. Really loved the look of this paper but realized later that it wasn't a good choice because it wasn't strong enough. The bulkiness of the pop ups inside was probably too much, eventually causing it to begin tearing along the folds.



Fortunately, by gluing on an additional layer of cardstock I managed to hide some of the tearing and hopefully minimize any more damage.


Inside, I decorated the cake using the scallop border from Plantin Schoolbook for the icing, and added a few Primas, and a lot of pretty paper flowers from All Natural Accents.



The doily under the cake is a Nestabilities scalloped circle, punched with a Fiskars hand held heart punch. Word to the wise: I've found that assembling the cake onto a doily or a plate first, and then gluing that onto the center fold of the card is a whole lot easier than trying to assemble the cake directly onto the card.

The rhinestone studded flourishes in the corners of the card were cut using a die from Cuttlebug's Vintage set.


The little princess die cut was created using a digital stamp called Princess Clarissa, purchased from Instyle Stamps. BTW, if you like the anime look, you will love the digital images and rubber stamps offered at Instyle Stamps!


I converted the jpg image of Princess Clarissa into a vector file (svg) using Inkscape, imported her into Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL), then cut with Cricut. Still not doing as well as I'd like with Inkscape, but I will continue to persist until I get all figured out! Since I wanted my princess to have a more updated look, I removed the medeival head gear she donned in the original image and replaced it with a crown embellished with rhinestones.





Used some shimmery Bazzill Bling cardstock for her gown and added a little flower shaped rhinestone bling. Chalked her a little to add some color to her cheeks and used a few drops of Diamond Glaze for a little twinkle in her eyes.


Princess cut was then attached to the center of the card with an easel-like tab so she would pop up and stand next to her cake.


These pop up birthday cakes are really fun to do! At first I thought they might be too complicated to assemble, but found some excellent tutorials with lots of advice from others who have tried them. Karen Burnstein, who designed this die for Sizzix has a lot of helpful tips and trouble shooting on her blog, I Am Not Left Handed. Paper engineering wiz, Carol of Extreme Cards And Papercrafting has posted the Stampin Up instructional video as well as a very detailed five part tutorial on "Building A Better Pop Up Cake" with lots of photos and some great solutions to problems you may encounter. And you gotta take a look at some of the unbelievably creative pop up cake decorating ideas over at Creations by Patti...she is one talented lady!