Birthday countdown

As I mentioned earlier, I am in the middle of planning my daughter's 5th birthday party. I saw an idea for this Birthday countdown board here on my friend's website. Loved it and knew I had to incorporate it into our household. I wish I could say I had it done 30 days prior to her birthday, but it was more like 13. She loves it and is having a blast moving her cupcake each morning.


If you look at my inspiration piece, you'll see I changed up the foundation a bit.

- I covered the whole inside of a baking sheet with patterned paper (Cosmo Cricket - Girl Friday).

- Everything is inked with Colorbox Chestnut Roan ink! Do this before gluing anything!

- But I used Susie's advice and did it with adhesive spray rather than my scrapbooking glue. Because the sheet is longer than 12" I had to overlap the pieces. Note: lay all of the base papers out prior to gluing to make sure it will fit the way you like. Once you put the spray adhesive on the back, you pretty much have one shot to get it on.

- After the base pieces were on (the blue lines and rainbow striped), I began gluing all the other pieces with normal scrapbook glue (I use Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive).

- I cut 1.5" square pieces with my trimmer out of all the various papers. Then I glued them down right next to each other in a grid.

- Glued crystals at the corners.

- Then I opened up Word, created a table with 5 columns and 6 rows at 1.5" wide and high. In the table I typed numbers 1 thru 30 (one number per square). Make sure they're centered and a good size font. Then I printed them out on Kraft cardstock. Cut the table into strips with my trimmer. Then used this Martha Stewart punch to cut out each number.

- I used one of my Soufle pens to get the inner circle drawn around the numbers. I punched a 1" circle out of scrap paper. Then I layed the circle negative over the number and just traced around it with my pen.

- Glued the numbered circles to the center of each square.

- Then I used this punch to make the scalloped border pieces to glue over my seams of my overlapping base papers.

- I used American Crafts thickers for "BIRTHDAY". If you look closely at the "t" you'll see that I had to manufacture him. I was out of t's and so I think I took an "E" and cut off the sides and repositioned them to form a "t".

- I used Cosmo Cricket Tiny Type letters for "countdown for". I did mat these letters with some cream colored cardstock.

- Then I used my Silhouette to "print and cut" cut clouds (5_clouds_Coo679_20509) with our names on them out of white cardstock and their shadows out of more Girl Friday paper. I also used the Silhouette for the cupcake piece (3_cupcakes_C00366_20509).

- For the clouds and cupcake, rather than glue them down, I glued magnets to the backs. The kind I used are old school Basic Grey magnets. They're super thin and worked great. No clue if they are still made or not though.

Now the cupcake moves as each day passes and when it's time for someone else's birthday, we simply move that cloud up to the top. My original intent was not to have the other clouds at thebottom but it's not bothering me too much right now. If worse comes to worse, I will place them in a baggie and then stick them to the back of the cookie sheet.

Sorry I didn't take pictures of the process, but this project is super easy. I love how it adds some color to my kitchen too.