For My Birthday Bro

Good Morning. Hope you all had a good Monday. Mine went by sooo fast. I did have the opportunity to make a few cards. My brother's birthday is this week. I almost forgot:( That's sounds awful I know but he forgets mine every year so I don't feel too bad. Anyways, I was able to whip this one up for him. I like everything about it EXCEPT that STITCHING. I think it's awful but it is actually sewn. When I put that kind of effort into something...it's STAYING. So, pretend it isn't there, ok? My brother won't care though. I will most likely make another WITHOUT the stitching.

So here is what I did: Basic Black Cardstock is stamped with the Sanded background stamp in White Craft Ink. I then stamped the leaves from a retired set called Artfully Asian with black brilliance ink and embossed with Black embossing powder. This is all done on watercolor paper. I then watercolored the inside with Kiwi Kiss using my aquapainter and used black chalk around the edges. The strip of Kiwi Kiss cardstock is stamped with the same color ink using the retired Weathered background stamp and black brads were added to the corners. I then stamped in black with the retired It's Your Birthday and punched this out with the medium SU Oval Punch and mounted with dimensionals. All this is mounted on 8 1/2X 4 1/4" folded Whisper White cardstock.


This is the inside of the card. It is a pop up card. I hope to be able to write a small tutorial on how to do this. It is really so simple and gives a real WOW factor to the recipient.
















This next card started out as trying to do Beate's weekend sketch and just wasn't working for me. Mainly because I was trying to make a taller, thinner card. So I just made a "sketch" of my own so to speak. I also tried a new technique that I just read about. I will try to find the link and post it later to give that person credit.

Basically you ink up the image using Versamark and stamp on watercolor paper. Then I used my aquapainter to watercolor the image with reinkers. I used Kiwi Kiss, Baja Breeze, So Saffron and Not Quite Navy. I then sponged around the edges with Baja Breeze. This was mounted on NQNavy cardstock. I then put a Jumbo Pewter Eyelet on the edge and tied a scrap of Kiwi/Vanilla Satin ribbon in a knot and adhered with a glue dot. The layer of Baja Breeze was run through my cuttlebug and then punched with the Scalloped Edge punch. I put a scrap of Kiwi layered with a scrap of NQNavy just above the scallop. The stamped image layer is mounted using dimensionals. I then used my scalloped, 1 1/4" & 1 3/8" circle punches to form the layered sentiment from Best Yet.
This is also popped up with dimensionals and I added the dots with my NQNavy marker.

So my cute story to share from dinner last night stars my son. We were sitting down for dinner and my husband sat down to the table singing "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way!" He then asked my son to say prayer. Dalton started out "Oh what..." while beginning the sign of the cross. Oops! He was continuing the Jingle Bell song. It was cute. We had a good chuckle. That was probably the best part of dinner. I hate to cook so dinner is never usually that fabulous...even when I try. But I continue trying....kinda:) Have you ever seen the episode from Everybody Loves Raymond when Ray tells his brother to do the wedding invites wrong so he won't have to help with the Wedding at all. Well, I've been doing dinner badly for a while now and no one tells that I don't have to do it anymore. Why does it only work for men?

It is going to be very rainy here the next few days. So, I hope to get some projects done. Thanks for stopping by!