An Adventure Birthday Card

     Today's card is for a friend's husband. Don't I ever get to make cards for women? He bought kayaks this summer, so I thought I'd use that as a focal point for his card. I went through the Life's a Beach cart and found a photo card with waves on it (page 45). I decided to use the Gypsy to weld a sun, from the page before, to the upper left corner of the frame and give it more of a scenic look. I then cut it out on my Expression. The sun was 2 inches, so I also cut out a 2 inch sun in yellow from Core'dinations paper and enhanced it with yellow gel pen (the circle outline) and Copic markers (the nose and lips) and added it with pop dots. I added small black pearls for eyes. I backed the frame with a lighter blue paper to make a sky. I edged the waves with Puffy Appliqué Markers that puff up when you heat them. The heat and humidity made them a bit runny, but they still worked ok. I attached the kayak, which was from Jolee. The sentiment is from Hero Arts' Big Hugs and was stamped with Tsukineko Rocket Red Gold.

  Click to enlarge to see details.

     I cut the inside papers with a wavy blade, on my paper cutter and the sentiment was made digitally in Print Shop. The fonts are Aloe,  Carlisle and LDJ Jilligraphy ( the first two are free fonts and the last is from Lettering Delights - see link in my side bar.) The lifejacket came on the sticker sheet with the kayak and the balloon is from Jolee's All That Bling, available at my Walmart.

     What would I do differently? Well, the light blue background could be embossed, maybe with divine swirls? I'd have to try it, to see if I'd like it or not. Fairly simple, but I think it's a nice card all of the same. A friend of mine wondered, if guys really appreciated a hand-made card and all of the time that goes in to it. I think it might depend on the guy. Some, I'd put a lot more work into it, and they would.  I don't think he'd appreciate the time it would take me to do a lot of hand coloring though. 

This card came together pretty easily. I learned that if you have some tearing, while you are cutting with your Cricut, it might not be your blade. It might be time for a new mat. The places where my mat was less sticky, was where the waves were tearing, everything else cut fine. Using a new mat, caused it to cut perfectly, all with the same settings. 

     Thanks for coming by. Please leave me a few words in the comments, so that I know you were here and that I'm not writing to myself ;- ) Have a super week.

Birds are singing and I made a masculine birthday card.

     Have you ever gone into your craft room and thought, I'll use a Cricut cartridge that will make my card easy? Well, that was my plan. Only, I ended up choosing an image that had a number of cuts and it was also a  masculine card ;- ) Well, it wasn't that hard only a bit time consuming. The weather was nice enough to have the window open, so I could hear the robins singing. The Cubs were on TV. I could almost believe it was summer. So, it was a nice time crafting.
    
     I decided to use Basic Grey's Granola pack because it's one of my favorite for men. I decided to make the bird on the pennant banner, from Birthday Bash, for the front. To work out the colors, I numbered the cuts on the handbook and numbered the corresponding colors of paper in the paper pack. This made it easy to remember, what I'd decided to cut out in which color. I figured I needed to see it, to decide if I liked it. I'm not good at visualizing colors together. So here it is.

     I wrote on the pennants with a Sargent Liquid Metals marker. It matched the Distress Tumbled Glass Ink, I used with the Hero Arts sentiment, pretty well. I used Judikins  diamond glaze on the birds beak. The legs were so small, I decided to draw them on, but not much shows up well on black. Long ago, I had purchased some puffy fabric markers, that you heat to make them puff up. These worked very well, I will need to use this effect on more cards. Here is the bird detail.

     Someone had mentioned them on a blog, but it was over a year ago and I can't remember whom. I was never able to find them in a store. I finally found these on the internet. Here they are, if you are interested.

     The inside came from the same cart (Birthday Bash), but was the phrase from the image with 2 birds holding a ribbon type banner. The yellow paper was some pattern paper I had in scraps. I believe it's from Hobby Lobby. It's the same as the bird's beak on the front. I popped up this sentiment. All it needs is a signature. This is going to a male in his late teens.

     What would I do differently? I don't know. Right now, I'm pretty happy with it. What do you think? Now I just have to be sure to mail it on time. He has an April 1st birthday and I always miss the birthdays at the beginning of the month. Even when I've got the cards done. The new month just sneak up on me. Kind of like the weekends ;- ) Have a great one. Comments are very appreciated!