The Second Birthday Card

I know I'm a day late in posting this, but I just had to show you the scrap page yesterday and I thought this could wait. This is the card I made for my Nephew's 2nd birthday. The card is a bit of a throwback to the way I used to design cards when i first started stamping. I had this idea that it wasn't good enough to just use the stamps in one set -- I had to somehow "creatively" put a bunch of different images together in a way that would make the card truly unique. Well, these days I am much more appreciative of how quickly and easily I can put a card together using just the stamps in one set, but it's nice to know I can still go back and do something like this.

I really love this little elephant image from the Happy Heart Day stamp set, but the hearts in the image and the "to an unforgettable friend" sentiment weren't really appropriate for a toddler boy's card. But no problem! that's what our stamping write markers were made for! I used my basic gray marker to ink up the image omitting the hearts and the sentiment. I then added the cake from the Voila set, and once again used the marker to isolate a second candle image to add to the cake to really personalize the card. Since all I had on the bottom were stems and leaves, I added little flowers from the Time Well Spent Level II hostess set from the new Spring/Summer collection. Boy, I cannot wait for Wednesday, when the new catalog will go on line so I can link to these sets so that you can see them in full. they are awesome!

I colored all of the images using my stampin' write markers in bashful blue, barely banana, certainly celery and lavender lace. I also used the same colors of card stock, along with confetti white. To finish off the card I stamped the birthday greeting with a stamp from the retiring punch party level 1 hostess set, punched it out with the 1 3/8" circle punch and mounted it onto a mat made of the scalloped circle. The whole thing was attached to the card with a dimensional. It looked pretty cool but I should have thought about it more before I made the card -- My nephew is at a stage where he likes to grab and pull, so within two seconds of opening the card it was in two pieces. Oh well, it really wasn't meant to be an heirloom or anything, and I think he enjoyed the "interactive" aspect of the card, even if it wasn't intentional. LOL!

So I hope you like the card and perhaps get inspired to use the little elephant to carry more than cards. Any small image would be perfect for him, which means that the elephant alone could take this set from Valentine's day to a year-round set.