Birthday sunshine and flowers

Hello, crafting friends!

When you need to make a card right now, a sketch is a great starting point - and Julie has come up with a great one for this week's CAS Colours and Sketches challenge!

I love how versatile this is. You can use it as it is, or flip it as I've done and moved the oval up a bit!

The oval shape on my card was achieved by trimming a panel with a stitched rectangle die by Heffy Doodle and cutting an oval aperture in it with a nesting die. I masked off the edges of the card base underneath the aperture and sponged yellow ink into the Sunny Day stencil by Clearly Besotted.

The aperture was just the right size for the birthday wishes sentiment from Avery Elle's A Tag For All. I glued that in place and then embellished the oval with leaves and flowers from Stampin' Up's Wreath Builder die set. TIP: I filled the hole in the centres of my blue flowers with the centres of some yellow ones I also cut. This is a fiddly task but I found that placing the flower onto a glue dot, then adding the centre made life easier. You can then peel the whole flower off the backing paper and apply it wherever you want it.

Are you ready to join us with your take on this sketch? As always, there's lots of wonderful inspiration from the CS&S team at the blog, and our lovely Guest Designer Valérie, and you can link up your entry there too. Don't forget to keep your  design clean and simple with plenty of space. I can't wait to see what you make!

EDITED TO ADD AN AWARD

This card was chosen as the Emerald winner at Color My Heart Color Dare!

CHALLENGES

I took colour inspiration from Color My Heart Color Dare's tic tac toe challenge, choosing the column on the right: Avocado, Canary and Bluebird; there's a Birthdays theme at Addicted to Stamps and More this fortnight, so I'm playing along there; I'm also joining in with the Anything Goes theme at Happy Little Stampers Stencil Challenge; and the Anything Goes option at Seize The Birthday.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

I  don't know what on earth I'm doing making such a springlike card! In reality, Arctic winds are flinging flurries of bitter little snowflakes against the windows and every time I leave the house I say "I'm going out, I may be some time." In another life, we might have cheered each other up with coffee get togethers or a cosy games evening. Le sigh. I have decked my house out with potted daffodils instead. Go away winter! Only spring now!

Sending hugs,