Happy Birthday Carson and Jadon!

Aloha, all!

     You know you are a lucky paper-crafting grandma when two of your grandsons with birthdays within weeks of each other are both really into the same childhood interest!  In my case, my grandsons Jadon and Carson are both REALLY into dinosaurs!  One lives on the west coast (Washington) and one on the East Coast (North Carolina) and they're 4 years apart in age.  But both are really going to like this special card that I made for them this year!

     The stamp set from which these happy looking guys came is called Dinoroar, and I think it is one of the cutest Stampin' Up! sets to come out for little boys in a long time.  I wish I could take credit for the color job on the two critters, but that credit has to go to fellow Stampin' Up! Demonstrator Cindy Elam, one of my fellow design team members on the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge blog.  Not only did she reveal the colors that she used, but she also shared that she used Shimmery White Card Stock.  Wow does that card stock make it easy to blend in colors!

     I colored each of the dinosaurs using a different technique.  I wanted to see how it would work if I used the Stampin' Write Markers themselves to color them in as opposed to how Cindy did it using Blender Pens with classic ink pads.  The guy on the right is colored with the markers and the one on the left with the blender pens.  My conclusion is that you can use either, but using the markers is going to create a deeper image than using the blender pens.

     The colors that I used are the same colors that Cindy used.  The dinosaurs are Garden Green, with Peach Parfait accents.  I added a bit of So Saffron to blend in the Peach Parfait.  I painted their little toenails with the Peach Parfait, too (bet no real dino ever had a pedicure!).  The mouth of the dino on the right is colored in with Calypso Coral.  Nice touch that, Cindy!

     Cindy made her card with papers that are no longer available, and she had only one of the cute dinos on the front of her card.  So my sketch is a bit different from hers – but not so much that I can claim credit for that either!

     All that has to be known about this card is for Jadon and Carson to know that Grandma Robin made it!  I'm going to have fun giving them these cards in person this week (yes, we're traveling AGAIN!) along with a dinosaur gift for each.  A bit of grandmotherly heaven for me!  I can't imagine that you can have as good a week as I'm going to have!

     But just in case you'd like to try your hand at this card, here's the sketch I worked with: