Elephant Bearing Gifts

I saw a post on Facebook earlier this week. A young boy with an inoperable brain tumor apparently likes to receive cards. So someone (a family member?) posted his picture, name, and address, and a request for people to send in cards for his birthday, which was yesterday. And no, this is not a hoax. (I did check it out, just to be sure.) Unfortunately, I didn't see this post until it was too late to get cards to him by his birthday. But I decided to make a couple to send, hoping he and his family wouldn't mind if they were a bit late. This is the first.

I based my design on this recent Operation Write Home sketch:

I flipped the sketch horizontally, and used narrower borders on the mats, but otherwise stayed pretty true to it.

I chose the elephant stamp from this new Spellbinders stamp set for the focal image. When I first saw this set when Spellbinders released it, it became a "have to get" item! And when I saw the request on Facebook for birthday cards, this elephant just seemed like the perfect image. I stamped him on a pale cream cardstock with Memento Tuxedo Black dye ink, and colored the image with colored pencils, using Gamsol to blend the colors. I stamped the greeting, from the same set, on a piece of that cream cardstock in Versafine Onyx Black ink.

I used 2 patterns from My Mind's Eye's "Boy Crazy" 6x6" paper pad. I matted the smaller piece, as well as the greeting and focal panels, with turquoise blue cardstock. Then I adhered the smaller patterned paper panel to the background paper. I determined where to place the greeting strip, and glued it down, adhering the focal panel over it. Then I mounted the whole front to an A2 card base. Finally, I used Ranger Multi Medium Matte to adhere a googly eye to the elephant, just for a humorous touch.

Even with coloring the elephant and gifts, and some time spent trying to decide what greeting to use, this card came together pretty quickly. I just hope the young recipient enjoys it.

I'm entering this card in Simon Says Stamp's Work It Wednesday: "Anything Goes."