Dominique and Connor both celebrated their birthdays in August. My sister had a cake for Connor when we visited, but I never did get any pictures of Dominique at her birthday this year. (We went to IMAX to see Harry Potter for Dominique's birthday and I forgot to bring my camera, not that we had many photo ops there. Their birthday cards are at the bottom of this post.)
So it's September now, and the weather is cooling down, but in August we swam in Toots' pool. Eric, Dominique, Max and Paige decided to have a cannonball contest to see who could make the biggest splash. Since it was hard to catch the actual moment of contact with the water on camera, I worked on getting a shot of each of them airborne. They all jumped again and again; I think the results speak for themselves!
I made this card for Dominique using the cute PTI envelope die on some retired DSP and some great new In Colors: Island Indigo, Calypso Coral and Lucky Limeade. I punched these little flowers with a store-bought punch to go with the Fancy Flower Punch and topped each with a sparkly little sticker.
The card base was embossed with the Petals-A-Plenty embossing folder. I cut a mat for the envelope and rounded the top using a Nestability circle die - I slipped the bottom of the die under the paper so it wouldn't cut the whole circle. I embossed the mat with the Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder and tied it all together with Pear Pizzazz seam binding ribbon.
I stamped the (retired) For You Flower in Versamark and heat-embossed it with white embossing powder. I used the PTI envelope die to cut the insert and stamped Happy Birthday using the (retired) hostess set Afterthoughts, minus the bottom line; the small stamped flowers come from Itty Bitty Bits. I adhered an I-Tunes card on the back with some removable Dotto and slipped it into the envelope.
The next card was Connor's. I colored the image from Take Spin using SU markers in Rich Razzleberry, Certainly Celery, (retired) Bermuda Bay, Concord Crush, Early Espresso and Tangerine Tango. I added the game spinner for a fun and whimsical touch.
I made a series of mats using the same colors, added some piercing on the Early Espresso mat and mounted it on a base of Certainly Celery, the bottom of which was embossed with the Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder.
The little tag was made with a stamp from PTI's Tea for Two Additions set and the Jewelry Tag punch and tied on with some Early Espresso baker's twine to wrap up our summer birthday season!
This is one of those cards that I didn't set out to design. So many of my design come about by sitting with a stamped image in my hand and fishing through the bits and pieces, odds and ends, which surround my work surface, to see what might look good with it. A lot of times a design is determined by finding a couple of pieces of card stock which are sized right for each other! So I picked up a small piece of Pear Pizzazz card stock and started looking for something to go with it. I found a bit of Early Espresso and decided to mat them in this slightly different way. Then I saw a bit of DSP that I liked with the leaf image; I think the diamond design echoes the shape of the leaf. Next, it was on to finding a background color to mount this combination on and I came up with a Daffodil Delight card base that was originally intended for something else. A little taffeta ribbon tied with a bit of baker's twine provided just the right finishing touch.
It's a simple blank card which can be used for most any occasion; I'll choose the inner sentiment when I choose a recipient!
