Aloha, all!
Today is the birthday of my good friend and neighbor, Marie. Of course I had to take the time to make a card especially for her. I'm still a bit limited in my stash of Designer Series Papers (saving that for a Stampin' Up! special in July!). But I do have a couple of packs of the delightful new Designer Series Paper Stacks. I've shared several projects that I've made with the Moonlight set. So today, I decided that I should tryout out the All Abloom Designer Series Paper Stack and for sure I'll have something really new for Marie's birthday card. I also wanted to try out one of my new stamp sets and found one that went beautifully with one of the papers from the Paper Stack!
In fact, except for the Whisper White Cardstock and those Daffodil Delight Candy Dots, everything about this card is brand new!
The stamp set is a photopolymer set, Age Awareness. There are SO many cute birthday greetings in this set and I have lots of birthdays coming up for which I can use many of them. But today the simple stamps, Happy and Birthday were just right. These are two separate stamps so you can place them just as you'd like them – stack them, set them side-by-side, place them in totally different places on your card front. I just love these photopolymer sets!
Once I chose the Happy Birthday greeting, I found the balloon stamp with a little curlicue string that looked like it would be perfect hooked into the curly letters at the left and right top of the "Happy" stamp. So that got me started on my layout. I stamped Happy Birthday on Whisper White Cardstock using Strawberry Slush and Mossy Meadow Classic Ink. They I laid the rectangle with the greeting on it on top of the Designer Series Paper and stamped the balloon twice using the Tuxedo Black Memento Ink Pad, so the stamps overlapped both the Whisper White and the Designer Series Paper. I matted the greeting layer with both Strawberry Slush and Mossy Meadow Cardstock and adhered it to the Designer Series Paper.
Finally, to complete the attachment of the balloons to the letters, I hand-drew in the missing part of the balloon string using my Basic Black Stampin' Write Marker.
Of course I had to use some new ribbons for this card! First I wrapped a length of Daffodil Delight 1/4" Cotton Ribbon around the bottom of the paper. Next I wrapped a piece of Strawberry Slush Thick Baker's Twine around and on top of the Daffodil Delight Ribbon and tied the Baker's Twine into a bow. Finally I tied on a small piece of the Daffodil Delight Ribbon and tied it in a knot over the Baker's Twine Bow. I think that looks kind of cute!
To finish off the card front, I stamped two of the balloons using Daffodil Delight and Strawberry Slush Classic Ink, cut them out, and adhered them over the black stamped balloons using Stampin' Dimensionals. Then I matted the card front with some Strawberry Slush Cardstock and mounted it all onto a card base of Whisper White Cardstock.
You may be wondering about the size of this card? It's a bit out of the ordinary. Once I got the card front layout figured out, and before I tied the Ribbon and Baker's Twine, I trimmed the Designer Series Paper to 4-1/2" wide by 5-3/4" high. I certainly could have made it a standard sized card, but I thought it looked so much nicer as a larger card. Once I matted the card front and adhered it to the card base, I ended up with a card that's 5" wide by 6-1/4" high. So out came the Envelope Punch Board to make a custom envelope!
There's no directions specifically for this size card on the Envelope Punch Board directions. So, as I didn't feel like taking the time to get this measurement perfectly sized to fit the card, I used the envelope measurements for the 5" x 6-1/2" card. That turned out to be just fine for this card. A larger envelope also gives me more room to stamp something fun onto the envelope, in this case the same balloon that I used on the card, along with another piece of "string" that's in the same stamp set. Fun!
With the left over piece of Designer Series Paper and one of the cute sayings from the stamp set ("any excuse to eat cake, right?" I decorated the inside of the card, leaving plenty of room for a note and signature. I'm sure Marie's going to love her one-of-a-kind card!
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