Happy Birthday – SSSC78

This week, I tried the Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge for the first time.  Here’s a birthday card using three of my new favorite stamp sets: Punched Posies, Aviary, and Curly Cute.  I chose the colors for the card based on the Designer Series Paper (DSP) I used from the Greenhouse Gala DSP pack.  I really like the zig-zag patter of this piece used, so I cut out a strip following the zig-zag pattern and placed it as the back layer.

The Punched Posies pieces are all popped up on dimensionals.  For the Happy Birthday sentiment, I used a Baja Breeze Stampin’ Write Marker to color the ‘birthday’ first – stamped it – then colored the ‘happy’ next – stamped it.  Both using the stamp-a-ma-jig for perfect line-up.

And isn’t the little birdie in the cage just adorable?  I eyeballed this stamping, stamping the birdie first and then the cage – it’s a little askew, but fine with me :).

And last but not least, I made an error with the ribbon, so had to fix it – and lo and behold – I came up with a new way to tie a ribbon!  My plan was to add a ‘stay put bow’ (see tutorials link on the left), but once I affixed the bow, it covered the Happy Birthday sentiment and it didn’t look right!  So, I tried a few things and came up with this – and I love it!

Let me see if I can explain it without pictures…

First, I punched a hole where I wanted the bow with my trusty Crop-A-Dile.  Then, I folded my ribbon piece in half and fed the folded end through the hole from behind the card.  Next, I took the loose ends of the ribbon and fed them through the loop on the front of the card, so were pointing upward.  And last, I just tied a bow and it looked great, so I went with it!  Let me know what you think!