Happy Birthday--With Clowns!

OK, I have to confess. When I saw the theme for Day 6 of Bugaboo Stamps' 5th Birthday Bash challenge series was to use a clown image, I grimaced. As I said in this post, I hate clowns. To me at least, they are just over-the-top scary. But I decided to bite the bullet and went looking on Bugaboo's website for a clown image to incorporate into my card. And I found this cute set of images--not scary at all! And perfect for a child's birthday card. So of course, I ordered & downloaded it right then.

I chose Operation Write Home's Sketch #195 for my card design:

To begin, I opened the clown image & this image (also from Bugaboo) in Photoshop. After I'd layered the Happy Birthday onto the sign portion of the clown graphic, I resized everything to fit on my focal panel. I had die cut a piece of Strathmore Mixed Media Paper with Lawn Fawn's "Stitched Journaling Card" die, and printed the image onto that. I colored the figures and the open letters in the greeting with Inktense pencils and a damp paintbrush. I also painted the sign background with regular watercolor.

Because I wasn't matting my focal panel, I chose a festive-looking  patterned paper from my scrap stash that didn't have much white on it. (This would allow the white focal panel to stand out better.) I cut it to 4.25x5.5", and cut a piece of purple cardstock for the strip on the right side of the card. After determining where to place the focal panel & strip on my card front, I adhered them.

For the embellishment, I pulled out one of my boxes of buttons, and chose a bright yellow one. I felt it didn't stand out enough against the white focal panel, so I die cut a scalloped circle with one of Lifestyle Crafts' "Nested Scallops" from green cardstock. I glued the button to that with Ranger Multi Medium Matte, and set that aside to dry for a bit. Finally, I sewed through the button holes with pink embroidery floss, and glued it in place on the card. All that was left then was to adhere the completed card front to an A2 base. I will be sending this card to Send a Smile 4 Kids.