Belated Birthday

While enjoying a glass of wine (or two!) with a friend one afternoon, she exclaimed, "Oh shit! I forgot my mother's birthday yesterday... Do you mind if I give her a quick call?" I of course said I didn't mind at all.  And when she was done, I offered to make her a special Belated Birthday card, for a price!  And she took me up on it, so here is what I did.

First, I decided to make a tri-fold card this time. I haven't done one in a while, and I would just hate to be stuck in a creative rut!  To do this, I used this nifty template gizmo called a Top Score  multiboard by Crafter's Companion. This scoring board can be used to make all kinds of creative card shapes, and it comes with really good instructions too.  I bought mine online at Paper Wishes. Oh surprise!

I knew I was after a card in reds, because I asked my friend what her mother's favorite color is. She actually had to call her! So I started digging through my extraordinarily organized stash of papers (We have a small house and I have a large stash!), and I honed in on this stripey rose pattern and a solid red to match.

Then I followed the directions on the Top Score to create the shell of the card from a heavy white card stock. Next, red paper went on the front side.  On the back side in the middle, I cut out a piece of the stripey rose pattern for the top, because it shows, so I want that to be pretty too. But I don't want it all matchey matchey, if you know what I mean. And for underneath that I found a pretty little sticker of a perfume bottle in pink to pop onto the bottom.

Then it was on to the inside. First, a couple more cutouts from that stripey rose pattern. Then I picked out the sentiment, which we didn't want all gushy, so I kept it very basic. In cases like this, I really want the rest of the card to be very creative and artistic. In fact, I prefer it that way. It's just my style and personality. I like to express myself with my time and my artwork. And each artcard is unique, created especially for that particular person.

Various stickers and some border punching around the sentiment completed the card. And then, since I knew it wouldn't be mailed, I took a sheet of the stripey rose paper and made an envelope. I used another neat gizmo called The Enveloper, also by Crafter's Companion, and also available online at Paper Wishes.

And there you have it, another artcard. Next time I'm going to change direction. It's not going to be an artcard!