stickin' it to pinterest - vol. 2

remember back in this post how i said pinterest gave me anxiety?  how i worried about after all the time i spent pinning, i would never actually put all the carefully placed & picked pins to perfect pin-ity use?  well here i am.   continuing in my endeavors to make use of my well curated pinterest boards & stickin' it to the pinterest man.

go me!

this was one of the first pins i pinned to my "i'm crafty" board.  i love how simple it is & yet it's so freaking creative.  who thinks of this stuff?  i'll tell you who.  martha stewart.  well, the people who write for her website, anyway.  the original tutorial can be found here.

and here is my version:

nothing crazy here in our ingredients list.  probably all stuff you already have sitting around your house right?  so you should probably make this.

funny story.

i went to the craft store for a balloon paper punch & got real mad when i couldn't find one after looking for over half an hour.  all the balloons in the original tutorial are perfectly uniform & i knew they HAD to be punched.  so i went home angrily cursing all things jo ann's.  i decided to look over the tutorial again & realized the balloons are just circles with little triangles attached.  duh!

so moral of the story is unless your craft store is awesome & has balloon punches?  you just use a hole punch, cut out triangles & tape them on.  lesson learned.

there's probably a few ways you could do this.  i made my triangles in photoshop with the letters already on them, printed them out in the color i wanted & cut them out.  that's one way.  i then folded them over the thread & glued the halves together to make cute little banners.

this was the fun part.

i followed the tutorial & put the banner up before the balloons.  this makes no sense & if i ever make a card like this again i'll do the balloons first.  duh!  it'd be a lot easier then reaching behind & around the banners.

anywho, to attach the banner i made small holes in the card, threaded the string through & tied knots on the other side of the hole.  it makes your string come out of the front of the card, but i didn't care.  i wanted it to be sturdy.  i attached the first layer of balloons using a glue stick & then the top ones with 3d foam squares to make them pop out.

you're pretty much done & at this point it's looking pretty cool.  i fussed around with where i put my balloons & moved things around until i liked the overall look.  yes, it did make a difference to have a yellow balloon here instead of a red one.  and a green one there instead of a blue.  obviously.

after all that fuss for the inside of the card, i bet you totally forgot about making something for the front, right?  silly you.  we can't have a card with nothing on the front can we?  nope.

i just went along with what the original tutorial did & made a single large balloon.  seemed easy & it was.

so now your card is done & you want to take pictures with it for your blog right?  you set up your camera with the self-timer, hit the shutter button & it starts to beep loudly to count down.  your 16 month old hears the loud beeping & comes running in from where he was playing to see what the noise is & an impromptu photoshoot takes place.

this step is mandatory.

and now you're done!  all you have to do is find someone who is having a birthday & give it away.  sam was the recipient of mine which works out because now i get to keep looking at it another week or so.  yes, i'm that proud & you will be too.

what things from pinterest have you made?  i'd love to see!

thanks for your votes friends!