Birthday Wishes and Summertime Sweetness

Hi everyone,

I have two cards to share -- one for OWH's Midweek Throwdown Challenge to make a birthday card and one for OWH's February ODBD Challenge to make a card featuring fruit.

Midweek Throwdown: Birthday Wishes

Paper: My Mind's Eye Life of the Party; cardstock: AC Christmas and miscellaneous stash; candle paper: Stampin' Up!border punch: Fiskars; embellishments: stash stickers; wick: dental floss

Okay, I'll start with the positives. I really like the pairing of the two patterns and am so happy to have found these little stickers in my stash. They seem to go well with the feel of the paper. And, I'm thrilled with the little candle, discovering lighter weight paper works much better than heavier dp for making candles that aren't too bulky and stay tightly wound.

So, what's not to like? I'm still struggling with my new cutting board. Cuts are getting better, but still not as precise as I would like.

ODBD: The Sweet Life

dp paper, "the sweet life" card, stars: Jillibean Soup Watermelon Gazpacho Soup
green cardstock: Core'dinations; periwinkle cardstock: Bazzill; red, black cardstock: Bazzill or AC
Mark Richards crystal stickers; elements inked using Close to My Heart Desert Sand

Part of me felt like it was cheating to use this sweet life card, but it was just too perfect for the challenge to pass up. The periwinkle paper seemed like a "nice" frame and solid foundation for the pattern in the watermelon paper. Since the periwinkle is very close to one of the other featured colors in this paper collection, it seemed to be a good complementary choice.

I'm really, really happy with the paper-pieced watermelon slice. It was made cutting circles of three different radii using a Creative Memories cutting system and then cutting a wedge-shaped slice from the circles. The seeds were hand cut from black cardstock. The slice was adhered using pop-up dots. (The sweet life card was attached to 2 pieces of cardstock to give it a little lift, but not give the card too much bulk.)

After adhering the watermelon slice, the card still seemed to need a little something more. After toying with using a vertical line of gems (first green, then red, finally black) along the left side of the card, I opted for the Jillibean Soup stars adorned with black crystals.

Parting Thoughts

I really enjoyed checking out the critter cards at today's OWH Blog Skip. Very cute!

Hoping to have time tomorrow for an Any Hero card, as well as working on an idea for a Mother's Day card that's been running through my head this last week or so.


Thanks for visiting and happy scrappin'!