Recipe for a cheesecake ... card

This is the “cheesecake" birthday cake card that I made for a Great Nephew at the weekend.

Here are the ingredients for making your cheesecake:

And now for the secret cheesecake recipe:
Take an XL Block Party squeeze punch and punch out a light yellow square, randomly punch out different sized circles using your set of Fiskars eyelet setting tools (come in 3 sizes), going over the edges so that it looks like swiss cheese. Punch out a darker yellow square and adhere behind your punched square. To make it into a layered cheesecake, take your medium Brick by Brick squeeze punch and punch out 3 darker yellow bricks, adhere 2 together to make the 2nd tier of your cake. Take the last yellow brick and cut to a length that suits the top tier (about 1/3), adhere to the longer section then trim to make your top tier. I haven't forgotten the small block the mouse is eating - take your medium Block Party squeeze punch and punch out one darker yellow square then take your mini-scallop paper edgers (decorative edge scissors) and nip a section off the corner to look like the mouse has been feasting. Hope you enjoy your cheesecake :)

If you haven't used a Fiskars Eyelet setting tool, well you are in for some fun times!!! They punch the hole and set your eyelets too. To punch the hole, all you do is hold the coloured part of the tool, with the end touching where you want to punch, pull the top section upwards (it is spring loaded) then let it go. I usually take three turns to punch through thick cardstock and it is so quick and easy, just hold the tool in place, pull up, let go and repeat. Don't forget to have a mat underneath your work or you will have little circle indentations EVERYWHERE - our chopping board still bears the scars of my early efforts! This photo shows how the cardstock feeds up inside the tool and fall out the section further up the side of the tool, well out of the way of your work.

Other tools use to "bake" this card include Not Even a Mouse LE lever punch and Diamond Edge border punch. I still have a couple of really long envelopes and kids love big cards, so the card base started as a 12x12 sheet of cardstock, cut at 9 1/4", scored at 4 5/8", folded firmly with a bone folder then added the layers to decorate. The 1" alphas were originally glossy and red but I sanded them down, inked, then painted with a fast drying adhesive and smothered each one with glitter, LOTS of black glitter - our house sparkles now :)

NOTE: I thought that kids loved big cards but the little fella that got his 7th birthday card today didn't even look at the front - he was in too much of a hurry to see how much more money he got from us to add to his growing pile of birthday money!!!