another birthday card

Hello.  Surprised that it's me again?!  Well, it was nice to take a vacation this past week with both kids at summer camp, although I still had to work a little from home with everything being computerized nowadays...

Anyhow, I made another birthday card, based on the last Card Patterns sketch.  And since it's a summer birthday, thought I'd make something for the Sunshine and Summertime Retro Fresh Challenge.

So I don't even know the name of this stamp set, it's the Ian and Anya in their undies, that come with all the different outfits.  Colored the aloha shirt with unblended pencil...does it look like those inside out aloha shirts?  Actually tried inking the inverted scallop circle nestability, the mustard seed distress ink happened to match some yellow cardstock that I had (non-PTI, shocking, I know).  The hibiscus paper is something I got a really long time ago from probably one of the first Creating Keepsakes conventions I ever attended, I can't even remember which booth.

Added some eyelets to the bottom, hard to get them lined up straight even with the big bite cropadile.  All this time, I had also been using my cropadile wrong!  The first time I tried to set an eyelet, I thought it didn't do a good job, so I continued to use my old eyelet setter.  I finally looked at the instructions a little more closely today and realized I had put the eyelet in upside down!

Anyhow, the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.  It doesn't quite look like the sketch because I actually messed up stamping it on the card.  So I dug through more old patterned paper and found this light yellow one that sort of seemed to match and just taped it over the original sentiment.

Well, have a good rest of the weekend.

Another Birthday Card

Hello.  Ack, I told myself I'm not supposed to be spending too much time doing hobby stuff, but I couldn't help it.  I used the latest sketch from Card Patterns #158.

Used a Lilli Claire digital stamp from Tiddly Inks.  I couldn't quite follow the bow and flower placement without it looking too unbalanced or something.

Cardstock is from Papertrey Ink, patterned paper is Prima Marketing.  Colored the skin with Copics, the rest with Prismacolor pencils.  Added distress ink around the image, got a little too overzealous, tried to use the flower to cover that overdone corner.  I think it was too dark in my room and I couldn't tell how much ink was getting on there.

Tried out my new Impression Plate from Papertrey Ink on the half lacey circle from Spellbinders, if you can tell in the close up.  I still don't know if I've figured out the optimal sandwich, but I think it worked pretty well once I sprayed the cardstock.  First I tried water, but it warped the paper.  I think I read somewhere on the PTI forum about using alcohol, so I sprayed some rubbing alcohol and it seemed to warp less.  Maybe if I hadn't been so impatient and tried heating it with my heat gun, it would have stayed flatter.

I'm also going to enter this in the Lily Pad flower challenge, although now after reading the fine print, it's mostly to pass along to other people who may want to enter as I see it's a judged contest...

Bye!