Butterfly Basics Make a Clean and Simple Birthday Card

It's time for a Clean and Simple card! As I explore all my new products from my Occasions Catalogue pre-order, I have so many ideas floating around in my cranium that I have difficulty deciding what to do next! I was dying to use more of my Butterfly Basics images, especially the smaller lacy butterfly so I imagined a more Clean and Simple design.

• The back panel Design Series Paper is from Best Year Ever, which is a Sale-A-Bration product. That means that during Sale-A-Bration, (January 6 - March 31, 2015) you can earn it free with every $60 spent in one order!  Awesome!
• Don't you love the script on the sentiment? It is also from the Butterfly Basics Stamp Set, available January 6.  
• The stamped lacy butterfly coordinates with one of the Thinlits in the Butterflies Thinlits Dies so it is easy to die cut it.
• To make the looped linen thread behind it, just wrap the linen thread around all four fingers of one hand three times.  Remove it from your fingers and give one end a twist so you have a figure 8.  Add a glue dot to the middle of the twist and glue down on your paper.  Adjust the loops the way you want them.  Very easy to do.
• You'll notice a little Gorgeous Grunge in the background, stamped in Coastal Cabana.  Then I added the honeycomb textured image from Butterfly Basics in Sahara Sand for contrast.

It's Tuesday and time for more:

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today! *List does not include Stampin' Up! sneak peek items.  They will be available Jan. 6, 2015. 

Product List

Gorgeous Grunge Wood Stamp Set [130514]	Gorgeous Grunge Clear Stamp Set [130517]	Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [100730]	Crisp Cantaloupe Classic Stampin' Pad [131176]	Coastal Cabana Classic Stampin' Pad [131175]
Sahara Sand Classic Stampin' Pad [126976]	Linen Thread [104199]	Big Shot [113439]	Glue Dots [103683]	SNAIL Permanent Adhesive Refill [104331]

*Butterfly Basics Stamp Set

*Best Year Ever DSP

*Butterflies Thinlits Dies

White Christmas in Silver for The Paper Players

This week, The Paper Players have a Clean and Simple challenge that features metallics, Silver and Gold.  I love shiny stuff so this was right up my alley!  And White Christmas was just the stamp set to use!

Do you have some old classic movies that you like to watch at Christmas time?  I love It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, and when my kids were little we would watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer faithfully every year.  So when I saw the challenge was Silver or Gold, I immediately thought of this cheesy little song from the movie:

                               


And with the character who sang the song being a snowman, I had the picture in my mind that I needed.  I chose Silver Stampin' Emboss Powder and the White Christmas stamp set and here's what come out of it all:

• I love working with the Photopolymer stamp sets because you can position a lot of the stamps together on one acrylic block and stamp them in one shot.  The exception here is the snowman, because the ground line has a width to it and when I tried to put the snowman right on the ground he looked like he was levitating.  I added him after I had stamped the trees and sentiment in VersaMark ink and embossed with the Silver Stampin' Emboss Powder.
• The moon is punched out of the Silver Foil paper.  I wanted Santa's sleigh, which is from the Holiday Home stamp set, to look like a silhouette when it was right in front of the moon and then silver in the night sky for the reindeer which had already flown past the moon.  I stamped the image twice, once in StazOn Jet Black on the Silver Foil sheet, and once embossed in silver on the card front itself.  I punched out the moon and lined it up with the embossed image on the card to achieve this effect.
• The card base is the elegant Brushed Silver cardstock.  So gorgeous I hate covering it up at all!
• I was itching to add something more...ribbon, button, something, but staying true to Clean and Simple, I abstained.  I'm still twitching a bit.....

Thanks for dropping by today.  Why don't you let me know your favourite holiday movies by leaving me a comment!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today!

Product List

White Christmas Photopolymer Stamp Set [135767]	Holiday Home Photopolymer Stamp Set [135095]	Brushed Silver 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [100712]	Silver Foil Sheets [132178]	Basic Black 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [121045]
Whisper White 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [100730]	Jet Black StazOn Pad [101406]	Versamark Pad [102283]	Silver Stampin' Emboss Powder [109131]	Heat Tool [129053]
Embossing Buddy [103083]	1-3/8 Inch Circle Punch [119860]

A Walk in the Wild for The Paper Players

Where I am staying right now, with my daughter up in central BC, which we consider to be north, due to cold, cold winters, it is a haven for wildlife.  Right now, bears abound in and around the town. The salmon run has not been very large this year because water levels in the rivers are low.  The summer was so dry that the berry crop was poor as well.  So, in order to survive this winter, the bears need to build up their fat stores and they are coming into the town to raid the fruit trees and garbage cans.  My daughter saw one on their street as she was walking home one day.

                                     

Another species that is abundant in the area is moose.  They pose a hazard on the highway, given their penchant for charging cars from out of nowhere.  At an average of 1000 pounds each, they can do major damage to both you and your car. What is interesting is that they are being endangered in this area by a very small species known as the winter tick. The winter tick infests the moose by the thousands and can actually drain the blood supply of a single moose.

When The Paper Players came out with their challenge this week, I knew the the moose from  Walk in the Wild would be the star of the show, on a masculine birthday card.  As I was also designing some cards using burlap for my next Technique Nights, I planned for a burlap background to add to the masculine appeal.

• It seems like I often go to monochromatic palettes in shades of browns when I do masculine cards.  I know it doesn't need to be that way, but I really like the somewhat vintage look myself, so it is the first thing I think of.  In this case I used Soft Suede.
• The burlap ribbon we have is only 1 1/4" wide, and I needed more of that to produce a backdrop for the main image.  I used three pieces of the ribbon 4 inches long and then I frayed the outside edges.  For the left ribbon, that meant fraying the left side of the ribbon as well as the bottom and top. For the right ribbon that meant fraying the right side of the ribbon as well as the bottom and the top.  For the middle ribbon, I only frayed the top and bottom.  Then they were adhered to the card side by side and it creates a pretty good facsimile of a frayed piece of burlap.
• The birthday sentiment is from Four You and I added an Antique Brad for balance.  I've been dying to use one of the sentiments from @SoSocial, so I chose @oneraddad and stamped it in Early Espresso ink on one of the Essentials Wooden Elements.

Thanks for popping by today, and join me tomorrow for a new As You See It Challenge card.

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today!

  Product List

Walk In The Wild Wood-mount Stamp Set [130354]	Walk In The Wild Clear-mount Stamp Set [130357]	Four You Wood-mount Stamp Set [130535]	Four You Clear-mount Stamp Set [130538]	(At)Sosocial Clear-Mount Stamp Set [134192]
(At)Sosocial Wood-Mount Stamp Set [134189]	Soft Suede 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [115318]	Very Vanilla 8-1/2X11 Card Stock [101650]	Soft Suede Classic Stampin' Pad [126978]	Early Espresso Classic Stampin' Pad [126974]
1-1/4" Burlap Ribbon [132140]	Antique Brads [117273]	Essentials Wooden Elements [132258]	Circles Collection Framelits Dies [130911]