Happy Birthday, Dad

Today is my dad’s birthday. He used to joke that he was an April Fool’s prank on his mom because he was supposed to be here on April 1 but waited. My dad has a quirky sense of humor.

They say that every little girl’s first hero is her dad, and that’s definitely true for me. Whenever I think of my dad, I feel safe and loved. He has always been there for my brothers and me (and all his grands and great grands) – loving, guiding, providing, and being a good example for us.

As a farmer, my dad didn’t get many days off. Cows still need to eat on Christmas. And when he wasn’t working on the family farm, he was working in our garden or on our lawn. We always had fresh vegetables and beautiful flowers all summer and fall, and there was always enough left over for Mom to can or freeze for winter. In the summer, Dad usually came home around 5 or 6, then worked until dark in the garden before finally stopping for dinner around 9 p.m. “Hard working” doesn’t even begin to describe my parents. Still, I remember many nights when he and Mom would pile us into the car and go to the drive-in movie theater as a surprise. And on Sunday afternoons, we’d go for drives in the country. Invariably, we’d find a country store that sold ice cream cones and he’d buy us all one. Whenever we went for a trip with Dad, even if it was just to one of our orchards, it was always an adventure.

Some evenings when we were all watching TV, if something scary came on, Dad was ready for my younger brother and me to jump in his lap so he could wrap his arms around us and keep us safe (my older brother would never admit that he was scared). We always knew if we were in Dad’s lap, nothing could hurt us.

Dad’s the one who taught me to write in cursive. I wanted to be like grown-ups, so I wrote in loopy letters (that weren’t really letters). Dad showed me how to write letters – and then words – in cursive the summer I turned seven. I was so proud to know how to write my name in cursive! And then our second grade teacher told us we had to wait until she taught us all the letters in our names before we could write it. What a time to be named “Elizabeth!” I still wrote my name in cursive at home, though, because Dad and Mom said it would be our secret.

So here’s the card I made for my dad.

Dad loves the woods (Mom & Dad’s house is nestled against a beautiful woods – with a perfect lawn that would rival any golf course!) He’s always been an outdoors kind of guy, so the Stampin’ Up!® Nature Sings Stamp Set – even though it’s technically a Christmas set – is perfect for him. I paired it with the Let it Ride Stamp Set from the Occasions Catalog.

I usually stamp an image, then mask it and stamp the background, but I recently read on a friend’s blog (I think it was my friend Deborah Smart) that she masked, then stamped the background, then stamped the image in the masked area. Oh, my goodness! This worked so well. Deborah – you ROCK! I created a mask of the big antlered guy (an elk? a moose? Unlike my dad, I am not outdoorsy. I know white-tailed deer. That’s all we have around here.) from a post-it note, then stamped the trees from the Let it Ride Stamp Set in Shaded Spruce. Then I removed the mask and stamped the animal using my Stamparatus. It worked so much better this way!

So here are a few tips. I inked the image in Early Espresso Classic Ink, but I placed the imaging sheet from an old Stamp-a-ma-jig (SAMJ) over the card stock in my Stamparatus. That way I could get the, um, animal perfectly placed. If you don’t have the SAMJ imaging sheet, you can use any non-porous material – a window sheet, report cover, cellophane bags, waxed paper, whatever you have on hand. You can wipe off the ink when you’re finished and use it again.

I also used Stampin’ Write Markers to ink the stamp. I wanted grass in Shaded Spruce, the creature in Early Espresso, and the antlers in Crumb Cake, so Stampin’ Write Markers worked best for that. I kept inking and stamping until I was happy with the image. If you don’t have a Stamparatus yet, you need to add it to your next Stampin’ Up!® order.

I used an Aqua Painter and Classic Stampin’ Pads to add color to the trees, the animal (I will ask my dad what this is. I’m thinking maybe a moose, but I’ve never seen a moose. Or maybe it’s an elk. It’s one of those, I’m sure.) and the “field.” Looking back, I probably should have used another green for the “field,” but we have so. much. mud. here in Virginia, it’s hard to think of fields being anything but brown. If we have a nice spring and summer this year, maybe I’ll redo this with a lovely green field.

The sentiment, from the Peaceful Place Stamp Set in the Stampin’ Up!® Annual Catalog, is stamped in Shaded Spruce, and I added a little Balmy Blue sky with an Aqua Painter.

I looped some Linen Thread to create a kind of bow, and added it to the stamped layer with a Glue Dot. I added the stamped layer to a 4″ x 5-1/4″ Shaded Spruce Cardstock layer, then to a Very Vanilla card base.

Happy birthday, Dad! I love you so very much!

Thanks for stopping by Stamping with Buffy. Have a lovely day!

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