Happy Birthday to Andrea!

Aloha, all!

     My sister's birthday is in just a couple of weeks and of course I planned to send her a handmade Birthday Card!  But this week (and next) happens to be the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge to make a birthday card.  So this is a two-fer!  And once again, I'm showing off one of Stampin' Up!'s new flip card templates – they're so much fun that I'm having a hard time putting them away!

     This card has some fun details in the stamping, especially on the card front.  So here's a larger photo so you can see some of what I'll be discussing:

     The stamp set that I used for the Card Front is called, For the Birds.  It's not a brand new set, but it's brand new in Robin's Craft Room.  As I was planning my purchases from the new catalog, I made sure that I didn't just focus on items that were new to the catalog, but also on items that I might want to use during the comming year.  This set caught my attention, so I bought it – and I'm using it!  One of the things that I tend to do with sets such as these, which have an image AND a sentiment with the image, is to cut the image off so that I can stamp either the picture or the sentiment by itself.  So I could easily stamp the little bird and butterfly image using a stamp pad without the sentiment with which is came, "with you is my favorite place to be."  Then I stamped "a little birdie told me," (separated from another image), and cut it out and adhered it on top of the main image.

     To color in this image, which I stamped on Naturals White Card Stock, I used blender pens and lightly colored in the various colors that I used, including Real Red, Island Indigo, Perfect Plum, Strawberry Slush, Crisp Cantaloupe, Gumball Green, Soft Sky and Crushed Curry.  Definitely a colorful image!

     I cut some Designer Series Paper (DSP)  from So Saffron and Real Red pages in the DSP Paper Stacks for the top layers on both sides of the card, and then added some butterflies punched with the Bitty Butterfly Punch and decorated them with Candy Dots.  On the inside, I used the same Real Red DSP to cut out the word, "yay," which comes with the Circle Thinlet Flip Card.  It's nicely hidden behind the circle when the card is still closed!

     For the image and sentiment on the inside of the card, I used another sentiment from the For the Birds Stamp Set, the one image that came all by itself in this set.  I wanted to stamp it and then cut it out using one of the Bitty Banners Framelits.  BUT – the curves on the stamp and the framelit were opposite.  So this time, I had to cut out the card stock with the framelit first, and then stamp on the back side of the cut piece.  It was quite easy as I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to place it! 

     The cake image is from the stamp set, Best of Birthdays.  I colored the cake with my Blender Pen and Real Red Ink, but used Stampin' Write Markers to color in all those little candles.  Some Candy Dots on the cake pulled this together with the rest of the card.

     So – now that I've had all this fun with a Birthday Card, it's time for you to think about making a Birthday Card and entering it in this weeik's Stampin' Up! Only Challenge.  Just click on this link to go see the rest of the Design Team submissions and then use the Link Tool at the end of the post to add your own project!