Sunday, August 13, 2017

Personalized Birthday Card


The theme for Lawn Fawnatics Challenge #10 is "Custom Sentiments." I have a friend whose birthday is coming up soon, and decided to make her a card. I got the idea for the greeting from Jennifer McGuire.

For the main part of the card, I chose Lawn Fawn's "Claire's ABCs" & Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps' "Script Birthdays" stamp sets. I also used "Quinn's ABCs" & "Quinn's Capital ABCs" for her name. I decided a little rainbow stamping--OK, a lot!--was in order. What is more festive than bright rainbow colors??? :) I had 12 lines of text, not counting the name, so I decided to use 2 shades of each color.

Sizing the panel was the biggest challenge with this card. I initially planned on doing all the stamping on a 4x5.25" panel. Ha! I quickly realized all my stamping would take up way more real estate than that! I finally decided to do a "test copy," and cut a piece of copy paper. I set up my stamps on a few acrylic blocks, and stamped everything out like I wanted it on that paper. I determined from that test that my panel had to be 6-5/8" tall. So I cut a piece of Canson XL Mixed Media paper to 4-3/4x6-5/8". (My plan at this point was to make a 5x7" card, with my focal panel matted.) Then I marked the vertical center, so I could keep my stamping in the middle of the panel. (When I set up my stamps, I made sure to center them on my blocks--also not an easy task!)

I stamped out my greeting, going in rainbow order. I used Hero Arts Bubble Gum; Lawn Fawn Guava; Hero Arts Fresh Peach; Memento Tangelo; Hero Arts Butter Bar, Lemon Yellow, Lime Green, Green Hills, Pool; Memento Danube Blue, Grape Juice; & finished with Lawn Fawn Fresh Lavender. Whew! When it came to stamping the name, I used Versamark, and heat embossed with Recollections Snow detail embossing powder. I colored in those letters with my Tombow markers, choosing colors that went pretty well with the inks I'd chosen, and blending as I went across.

This is where my card design took a(nother) left turn. I wanted balloons, but didn't have enough room for them on my panel. No worries! I trimmed my panel to 3-1/2" wide (basically leaving 1/8" of space on either side of "Audra"), and cut 2 more narrow panels to go on either side. Now my card would be 5-1/2x6-5/8". I die cut several masks using the two smallest of Lawn Fawn's "Party Balloons" dies, and adhered them to one of my narrow side panels. I inked over them with Distress Oxide inks in Picked Raspberry, Fossilized Amber, Twisted Citron, Salty Ocean, & Wilted Violet, again going in rainbow order. After I finished inking, I spritzed on water from my Distress Sprayer, let that sit for a few seconds, then blotted it up with a dry cloth. I repeated the process on the other narrow panel. I was pleasantly surprised that, even though I'd used regular masking paper and the masks had stained when I sprayed the water, the balloon shapes on my inked panels remained white. Cool! :)

To finish my card, I created a portrait-oriented card base. I cut 2 pieces of white cardstock, one at 5-1/2x6-5/8" & the other 1/2" longer. I scored the longer one at 1/2", and adhered my other panel to the underside of the resulting flap. I adhered my side panels with my ATG tape runner, covering up the flap on the card base. For the center panel, I used Scor Tape to adhere a piece of craft foam to the back, and more Scor Tape to mount it to my card base.

I'm also entering this card in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp's Monday Challenge: "Happy Birthday"
613 Avenue Create Challenge #200: "Anything Goes" (not playing the "Shabby Chic" twist)

5 comments:

  1. This is stunning! I love that balloon background and the multicolored sentiments.Thank you so much for celebrating with us at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog!!

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  2. Wow, this is one awesome card design! I love the rainbow colors and how you used the birthday song, so clever! Totally clever card designs! Especially love the Mickey hats on the cute critters! So happy you joined the challenge at Lawn Fawnatics!

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    1. Sorry my comment doesn't make sense, I accidently pasted a comment from another place. I do love your card and I'm so glad you shared it at Lawn Fawnatics!

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