A hugely happy happy birthday

Hello, crafting friends!

 

I'm living in Birthday Land at the moment as lots of friends and family celebrate their special days around this time of year. Today I want to show you a really quick card that I made for my brother's upcoming birthday:

 

The bright striped paper is a Stampin' Up design given to me by a lovely friend. I trimmed a little smaller than a card front and cut off the top at an angle.

 

 

Along the top I positioned the die cut word 'happy' from Uniko's Big and Bold Happy die set. I cut several of these out of yellow card and stacked them together for some nice dimension. I topped that with a birthday sentiment from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks stamp set, stamped in red ink and snipped out. That's it, very quick and simple :)

CHALLENGES

Kim's fabulous 'cut on an angle' sketch at Freshly Made Sketches this week was my inspiration for this card, so I'm linking up there; I'm also joining in at AAA Birthday, where the theme is Clean and Simple birthday cards; The sentiment is the main focus of this card so I'm playing at Word Power too.

 

AND IN OTHER NEWS

The nesting season is in full swing in my tiny garden and loads of birds, mainly sparrows, robins and blackbirds are busily popping in and out of the ivy and making exciting rustling noises. Eva takes it all in her stride and although she gets quite interested when the fledglings start to learn to fly, I am pretty confident she wouldn't harm them. Lulu, on the other hand, spends a lot of time watching them...

 

... and I cannot be sure that there are no dark hunting thoughts going on in that pretty head! You will be glad to know I don't leave her unsupervised in the garden!!

Sending hugs,

Over the rainbow

Hello, crafting friends!

How do you decide which colours to use for your projects? I often use the colour combinations suggested in card challenges but sometimes the colours in nature, or on a book cover, or on some beautiful fabric will inspire me. But sometimes only a rainbow of colour will do!

This simple card was really fun to make! The first step was cutting the word Happy out of a card panel using Uniko's Big and Bold Happy dies. I made sure I kept the little centres of the 'A' and the two 'Ps' as I was going to need them later. The panel was then trimmed with a stitched rectangle die from Heffy Doodle.

I wanted a lovely rainbow effect to show through the panel so I used coloured pencils to create one on a card base. Every now and again, I'd hold the panel over the card base to check that my colouring was in the right place! Once I was happy, I glued the panel down along with those little centres I had kept.

Finally, the birthday label, from Uniko's Simply Said Blocks, was stamped, snipped out and glued in place and I finished with an enamel dot, a sequin and an orange gem.

CHALLENGES

I made this card to enter into Uniko's May/June challenge where Anything Goes and I've gone for the optional twist of using die cuts; I was inspired by the Radically Rainbow theme at The Rainbow Card Challenge; I'm also joining in with Happy Little Stampers Dies challenges where Anything Goes; and sharing at Watercooler Wednesday where Kath is hosting the Occasions challenge.

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Right, I'm off to feed some adorable little pusscats for a friend - but shhhhh! Don't tell Eva or she'll be outraged!

Sending hugs,