An Almost-Spring Birthday!

Aloha, all!

     If it's Friday, it must be time for another rendition of Sketch Frenzy Friday!  That's a challenge group where we're given a sketch each week and asked to make a card of our own that follows the sketch.  This week I saw the sketch and I immediately saw flowers!

     I just love the Sweet Sorbet Designer Series Paper set in this year's Sale-A-Bration catalog.  You know what that means, don't you?  It means that this is a set of paper that you can GET FOR FREE JUST BY PURCHASING $50 WORTH OF STAMPIN' UP! PRODUCTS!  And I've already received two packs of this paper because of my own purchases, and I'm well into my second pack.  I especially like the sheet with the lovely flowers in it!  They are so defiinitely "Spring"!

     Perhaps I should share this week's Sketch Frenzy Friday sketch with you so you can see how I made my own design to go along with it.  You may think in looking at this for the first time that there are bubbles in this sketch!  Not so!!!  I looked at those circles, and I saw flowers.  I saw one large flower and several smaller flowers.  I wasn't so sure about the "rick-rack" type design, but I quickly decided it looked like ribbon.  Once I had that all firmly in my imagination, I started my design.

     I scanned my bookshelf of stamp sets and decided on the set, Mixed Bunch  which was made to go with the Blossom Punch.  That was all that I needed for the large element on this card.  For the smaller elements, I used pieces punched with the Boho Blossoms Punch, two of which I stamped with smaller images from the Mixed Bunch set.  The colors I chose for the flowers were some of the colors in the Designer Series Paper sheet that I'd used for my background:  Crisp Cantaloupe, Pistachio Pudding, Summer Starfruit, and Pool Party.  I added one more small flower towards the bottom of the card as I prefer an odd number of elements of the same type in a design.

     Once I had the flowers done, I chose some Pool Party Seam Binding Ribbon for the ribbon accent suggested by the sketch.  But, when that was all done, I really didn't have room for the sentiment near the ribbon.  So I chose to put it towards the upper left corner of the card.  The sentiment is a birthday greeting from the Wetlands Stamp Set.  (I think I like that set for its sentiments more than I do for its images!!)

     The embellishments for this card include some Candy Dots in various colors to match the colors in the printed paper.  I also included one of the In Color Dahlias (Summer Starfruit), even though I really do not much like them for cards that are going to go in the mail.  They're very sharp and will tear through envelopes unless you have extra layers between the card and the envelope. But I liked the look of the Dahlia on this card, so I sprung for some extra cardstock in the envelope, as well as for the extra postage that required!

     This is a very special birthday card.  It has already been sent off to a dear aunt of my husband who has also become a dear aunt to me.  We get to see her at least once a year – and unfortunately only once a year!  But it's easy to remember her birthday as it's the same as mine!  So that makes it a LOT of fun to make a card for her!

     If you have any questions about how I make cards for challenges, please don't hesitate to ask me.  I love getting people hooked on interested in projects such as these.  They're so much fun!

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