Birthday Card for my hubby

The cards I make for my husband each year are ones that I really sweat over!  I want them to be perfect because I know that he really treasures the time and creative energy that I put into them.  They frequently have an oriental theme, because he's Chinese.  And I really do love working with oriental papers and embellishments, and then combining them with more traditional papers and elements.  I'm very contemporary traditional!

So here is this year's birthday card. And it really does combine the oriental and traditional.  I went out on a limb with the metallic copper paper, because he is not a big fan of browns, but I love it, so I went with it.

I picked three background papers from 'the Natural Stack' by Die Cuts With a View (DCWV). I have quite a few different 'stacks' by DCWV because they make high quality papers and I just really love the papers they put out.  Then I added some copper sticker stripes along the borders of the papers so the transition from paper type to paper type didn't look so odd.  The copper stripes are kind of like those transitional strips between carpet and hard flooring in your house!  And all of these beautiful copper foil papers were really just a background for the tiger scene I got from the "Japanese Design" book and cd from DoverPictura. I printed out the tiger and then mounted it on the paper I used for the skinny stripe, which is very subdued. And for a little more bling, I added some orange crystals in the corners.

Then for the inside. I used two of the three background papers from the front as backgrounds for the bamboo, round grasses and sentiment.  The bamboo and round grasses were done with metal templates that I have.  For color I used a variety of green inks, starting with the lightest colors and ending with the darkest colors. 

The sentiments I found in my stash somewhere, but I didn't like the paper or font that had been used.  And I wanted to combine a couple sentiments.  So I went to my trusty Print Shop Pro program from Broderbund and created my own sentiment with exactly the fonts I wanted, the size and shape I wanted and on the paper I wanted.  And I must confess, I do this a lot.  I'm really starting to play around with mixing fonts, bolding certain words, and layering words over top of each other.  I use the heck out of that program!  And I do occasionally update to a newer version because I like it so much.  

Then it was time for a few last embellishments.  The copper hexagons I cut out one by one from background paper. Honest! The orange bamboo stickers I took out of my stash.  And just so folks would know, including my hubby, that bamboo is a sign of vitality, I included then little 'vitality' sticker too.

And voila! There you have it. 

Lilac 'Miss Kim' Photos

These are three photos I took yesterday morning of our 'Miss Kim' Lilac. It is having its first really spectacular bloom since we planted it a few years ago. Which photo do you like best? Let me know! They will all be up for sale on my Etsy shop www.andreagoo.esty.com very soon.

Happy Birthday - for a musical guy

OK, well I'm still on my Color Me Resist paper kick!  This time the card is for my oldest son, who will be 28 years old on May 2nd. And exactly how did he get so old?

My son eats, sleeps and breathes music, and he has since he was 4 years old.  So I chose to use a 12x12 inch sheet of the musical notes Color Me Resist paper.  I colored the whole sheet first, and then decided how to cut it up and use it.  I wanted an old world feel to the paper, so I chose golds, browns and a bit of green too, layering the ink colors over each other until I felt that it looked the way I wanted it to.  And since the paper has this wonderful flourish detail in the bottom right corner, I chose to use that part for the front of the card.  Then I colored a matching tag in greens, for a little contrast, and added a Happy Birthday vellum sticker from my stash.  Next I added a few rusty-colored dots with those Sakura Glaze Pens that I love so much, for a pop of color, and a matching dot-thing sticker-thing on the tag.  And this is how the front of the card looks now that it is completed.  The paper is so wonderful, I really felt like anything more would be too much.

 

Next it was on to the inside.  I started with another big chunk of the music notes paper on the right side.  Then I found some sentiments that I liked for a birthday card for a young musical guy, nothing too mushy!  And I added some music note stickers that I had in my stash. 

And I thought I was done!  So I showed it to my hubby who said, "What are you going to put on the other side?"  Everyone is so used to me covering the whole bloody card with artwork, I can't skimp anywhere anymore!  So I thought about it for awhile. I didn't want to detract from what I had already done. And then it hit me!  More music notes, cut out of the music notes paper. And then it was done....