Fun & Funny Handmade Cards Using the Spellbinders “This Is Life” Collection

Welcome, crafty friends! Marie here, from Marie Nicole Designs, and I am so excited to be back on the Spellbinders blog to share a few fun cards.

I was able to create with the This Is Life collection. This collection is full of such fun and humorous sets! There’s something for the pickleball lover, as well as a few other sets to add some fun to some of the more mundane parts of life. A little laughter can always lighten up most situations. Let’s take a closer look!

For my first card, the sentiment is the whole show. This big “UGH” is such a focal point, and I love the font! I cut this out several times, once from black cardstock and once from pink, and then I layered them together. I chose to add the pink to the back as a shadow because I wanted the black font to pop against the bright ink blending I wanted to do.

I went ahead and cut a diagonal strip out of my card front, and made sure to keep the two corners so I could add them back on with foam adhesive later. Then, I grabbed a card base, penciled in the area that needed to be ink blended, and got to work.

I used Distress Ink colors for the color in the diagonal strip. From left to right, the colors used were Scattered Straw, Worn Lipstick, and Festive Berries. This gave a yellow-to-red ombre blend that has a pinkish hue to it. Perfect to pair with the bold black of the sentiment!

I then stamped the supporting sentiment, “adulting is hard”, and added the corners back on with foam adhesive. The UGH is glued down, with a little foam behind the tail of the “g” for support. I also thought there needed to be a little texture, so I added black splatters along the edges of the diagonal. I’d advise doing this BEFORE adhering everything down, but since I didn’t, I just covered the areas I didn’t want splattered with a rag before adding the color.

I really love how my second card turned out! I used the Born to Dink set and created a little pickleball scene on the front. Now, I do not play pickleball, so I had to look up what some of these terms mean, but the card was still fun to create, nonetheless.

There is a bit of hidden engineering to this card that is hard to see on photo. The blue area behind the net is an acetate window, and the pickleball freely moves inside. That way, it can look like the paddles are bouncing the ball back and forth as you tip the card. It’s much like a shaker!

The green area is the court that I masked off lines for and then ink blended with Mowed Lawn ink.

The frame, the green pickleball court, and the net are all adhered down with foam adhesive to make the raised-up front layer. Then, there is a sheet of acetate before the whole front is adhered to the blue background with the foam. And of course, the bright yellow ball is placed inside the shaker area before adhering everything together.

For the paddles, I used navy blue, orange, and an orangish-yellow color. I added them to the sides of the card and then trimmed the overhang so it would be perfectly lined up with the edge of the card.

I really love how the ball moves so smoothly back and forth on this card. It really gives the impression of playing pickleball!

This final card just makes me laugh.

We’ve all been there- the feeling that everything is just a dumpster fire. Adding a little laughter into the situation can really lighten the mood, though!

I cut out this dumpster character from the Dumpster Fire set and assembled him. I kept the colors to greens, oranges, and yellows.

Then, I thought if we’re gonna burn, we might as well crash, too. So I set our dumpster friend on an angle at the bottom corner of the card, and added colored stripes behind him. The stripes give an illusion of movement across the card, so it looks like he’s speeding downhill.

I also added splatters to this card, but this time BEFORE adhering everything together. I thought the splatters over the grey cardstock looks like the pavement the dumpster is flying over. Then, I added the stripes and the dumpster.

The sentiment is stamped in black and also just makes me laugh.

And, as a finishing touch, I added some sparkles to the fire. Because if you’re gonna crash and burn, you might as well be fabulous through it.

So that’s it! A quick look at the This Is Life collection. I hope it puts a smile on your face like it did mine.

Until next time, Marie

Spellbinders Supplies:

Other supplies

Colored cardstock, foam adhesive, liquid adhesive, acetate, Distress Inks, black ink, scissors, paper trimmer