Birthday Wishes

Welcome back to Stamping with Buffy! I hope you had a fabulous weekend, because I sure did! I had absolutely nothing planned this weekend. Mike had to work on school; he’s a little behind, but fortunately his profs are very understanding.

I caught up on some gardening, cleaned the pool, and straigthtened the house a bit. For the rest of weekend, all I had to do was create new projects. I’ve been playing “catch up” for months, so it’s nice to be ahead a little! (For the record, I did swim a bit, but it’s hard to get excited about swimming in 85 degree water. It’s like swimming in cooling bath water.)

Except for the Stamp Off Challenge this Friday, my projects for the next week are Mike’s picks. I showed him five cards, and he picked the order. Here’s his first pick.

I think this is probably my favorite as well. This card was originally intended for a Stampin’ Up!® demonstrator team challenge. Our local Stampin’ Up!® demonstrators meet each month and share ideas and tips, review the Stampin’ Up!® news and updates, and have amazing snacks and a make & take. We also have a challenge to work on for the next month. This month, we have a sketch challenge.

I love sketch challenges, because there’s so much freedom in interpreting the sketch. Some of my team members, however, aren’t as fond of that style of challenge, because they want to interpret them literally. They’re getting more flexible, though. I totally sympathize with them; I had a hard time at first too!

Here’s the sketch we’re working with.

A literal interpretation would have a rectangular layer across the bottom, then a circle and a star shape/stamp, then the sentiment layered across the lower elements. But look again at my card.

The rectangular layer is a stamp. I stamped the floral flourish two times on Whisper White Cardstock with Tuxedo Black Memento Ink. I wanted parts of the image to be “hung over” the edge, so I drew a light line where I wanted the bottom edge to be, then fussy cut around anything hanging over. I had one little blip toward the end, but if you don’t know, you probably won’t notice. (Now that you know, though, you’ll notice, Sorry!)

Next, I used the Butterfly Beauty Dies to die-cut the floral elements from Blackberry Bliss and Pear Pizzazz Cardstock. The die-cuts on the left are the “circle” in the sketch. The ones on the right…Well, keep reading.

And finally – the star! Since I used Purple Posy Cardstock for the card base, I wanted a purply butterfly for the star element. I die-cut two images from Highland Heather and Blackberry Bliss Cardstock using the Butterfly Beauty Dies. Then I die-cut the image one more time from the Whisper White stamped Cardstock. This gave me a beautiful three toned butterfly – the Highland Heather and Blackberry Bliss layered butterflies and the Purple Posy background. Since this die is a multi-butterfly die, I had to finangle it a bit to make it work without cutting areas of the Whisper White layer I didn’t want cut. It wasn’t difficult; I simply made sure the dies I didn’t want to cut were under the Whisper White layer. Perfect! – except one of the butterflies decided to emboss (or maybe deboss; either way – not want I wanted) part of the Whisper White layer.  And that’s why there are extra floral die-cuts on that side of the card. They are hiding something. (Any time you see a card and think, “Hmmmm, that’s an odd place to add that die-cut/embellishment/bow, stamp…, you can be sure there’s a really good reason. At least on my cards.)

So I have the star, the circle, and the rectangle. Now to add the sentiment. I didn’t want to add a label or tag that would cover up my hard work, so I decided to die-cut birthday using the Well Written Dies and the Noble Peacock Foil Sheets. Then I stamped wishes from the Well Said Stamp Set in Blackberry Bliss Classic Ink.

After I finished, I decided I didn’t want this to be my challenge card. We draw names for a challenge winner, and whoever wins gets all the cards. I never win. Ever. But I really wanted to keep this card and I didn’t want to make another one. I know I should make two at at a time, but when you’re flying blind, you don’t want to make two in case you mess up. And then, when I finished, I realized I didn’t want to do it again because I had other things I wanted to create this weekend. So – one of my August friends/family members will get this card next month. If your birthday is in August, try to forget you saw this.

Just a reminder – you only have a little over a week to take advantage of the Bonus Days Promotion! For every $50 you spend on Stampin’ Up!® products in July, you’ll receive a $5 coupon code to redeem in August.

Join my team in July or August and you can add an extra $30 in product to your starter kit (that’s $155 in products for only $99 plus tax – and shipping is free!). AND you’ll receive a coupon code for $10 to spend the next month. What are you waiting for? Sign up today!

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

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