Happy Birthday, Kiara!

Aloha, all!

Today is our youngest granddaughter’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Kiara!

Kiara is a dancer, and a fabulous dancer at that. She’s among the hundreds of children who started dancing school when they started elementary school, and have kept with it through the years. Today, Kiara is 14, and, with her older sister, is winning awards for her beautiful dancing. So how could I not make her a birthday card that celebrates her incredible talent!

Beautiful You Was the Perfect Stamp Set!

Is that dancing beauty from the Beautiful You Stamp set not perfect?! Absolutely. The other part of the stamped image is one that, unless you subscribe to Paper Pumpkin kits, you may not ever have seen. The February Paper Pumpkin kit complements the Happy Birthday to You stamp set from the Sale-a-Bration brochure. And I just happened to have that kit still out on my work space when I decided to start designing this card. A candle used to be at the point where I placed the dancer’s let. They were both the same width, so all I had to do was cut out the candle and insert the leg. Perfect!

Putting the Colors All Together

Once I chose the stamps, the next step was to choose my colors. So I started going through my current Designer Series Papers. And once I got to the Parisian Blossoms Specialty paper set, the Petal Pink and Pool Party colors just reached out and grabbed me.

First, I chose the two sheets of paper, one with the blue (Pool Party) and once with the pink (Petal Pink). Then out came my Stampin’ Blends and the card quickly took shape. To make the dress of the dancer sparkle, I chose Gold Foil paper for her dress. I used Stazon Jet Black Ink to stamp on the foil. The Stazon doesn’t smear, so it was the perfect choice. I hand cut the dress (and the hat). Then I glued it to the image I’d already stamped onto the Whisper White rectangle. I used the Petal Pink Light Stampin’ Blend marker to color in her arms and legs. Finished!

Tying It All Together

My favorite part of most of my projects is discovering the embellishments that are going to make the project “pop.” But I always try to do this without detracting from the overall design of the card. If you’ve followed me for long at all, you have to know that my favorite embellishment is pretty much always ribbon. In the case of this card, I had the perfect Stampin’ Up! ribbon in my stash with the Petal Pink Metallic Edge ribbon. And the “metallic” in the case of this ribbon is gold! I know I’m overusing the word, “perfect,” today. But, with the gold dress and gold in one of the papers, gold-edged ribbon was, um, perfect.

Thanks for putting up with my gushing about my granddaughter – who is just, well, Beautiful! And wish her a Happy Birthday with me!

Happy Stamping!