Vintage Birthday

One of my stampin' buddies recently celebrated a milestone birthday.  I won't say which one, but it is the same one I celebrated last June!  In honour of her birthday I created this vintage birthday card for her...after all, she is a classic!

Birthday card for a stampin' pal using the Forever Young stamp set and sentiment from Word Play.

One of my favourite parts of this card is the background.  I'm not sure it is visible in this photo, but I created an embossed background on the black card base by randomly scoring a grid using my Simply Scored.  It was SO quick and easy to do and adds an interesting backdrop for the rest of the card.  Try it...you'll be glad you did!
I used lots of other details to add to the vintage feel, including a strip of Timeless Portrait designer fabric, an antique brad and some black velour ribbon that is long-retired.   I wanted the sentiment to kind of float on the card so I heat embossed it with pewter embossing powder and then fussy-cut it out before popping it up against the black decorative label (which I embossed using the houndstooth folder).
On another note, there are just FOUR more days until the start of Sale-a-bration!!  Are you excited???  I sure am...and I have a workshop booked on the very first day to share my excitement with a whole lot of new stampers.  I can't wait!  This weekend is all about making my list for my very large order that is going in first thing on Tuesday morning!  Happy shopping and have a great weekend!

Forever Young

Last night I sat down to make a birthday card for a colleague and friend who is turning 40 in a couple of weeks.  I wanted to use the Timeless Portrait DSP from the new catty.  I just love the rich colours and bold patterns in that paper!  I also wanted to create something for this week's challenge at Friday Mashup because I haven't played along in a while and I miss it!  The challenge is to create a birthday card using the following colours:  cherry cobbler, not quite navy, always artichoke and sahara sand.  Well, the birthday card part wasn't a problem, but because I was using the DSP, I had to substitue some colours:  not quite navy became island indigo, always artichoke became river rock and sahara sand became very vanilla.  I also added black to make everything pop.  So, here is my card...

Birthday card for FM16 using the Forever Young, Word Play and Perfectly Penned stamp sets and featuring Timeless Portrait DSP.

This is an easel card that folds flat and fits in a standard envelope!

The Forever Young set is another one that I knew I just HAD to have when I first saw the new catty.  I love that image of the tree with the swing.  So calm and peaceful...I remember being that little girl, swinging away without a card in the world...Sorry!  I got a little nostalgic there for a second!  That's what I'm hoping happens when my friend opens this card on her 40th birthday:  a little nostalgia and happy memories.  I'm not going to go into detail about how to create this card (it took a while!), but I will list all the  new products I used:
Timeless Portrait DSP, lace ribbon  border punch, stripes embossing folder, island indigo in-colour cardstock, Forever Young and Perfectly Penned stamp sets.  Whew...that's a lot of new product on one card!  Can you tell I'm loving all the new goodies???
On a completely different note, don't forget to take my survey (link is at the top of the left-hand column on this page) for a chance to win a $40 gift certificate.  The survey closes this Sunday, so don't miss out!