1st birthday: Pink and sparkly

How quickly time flies; a year has already passed since I was making a welcome card for baby Amelia. Of course, I forgot to put her birthday on my cards to-do list so I didn’t get a reminder to start making this card — I normally give myself plenty of time to come up with card ideas, but this had to be go from “no idea” to “in the post” in short order.

After much pondering, my poor cold-addled brain finally came up with the idea of having a large number one with some animals on balloons. I also saw the opportunity to use the Mama Elephant rainbow die that I’d just picked up from Seven Hills Crafts. I could probably have used one of my (many) so-far-unused stamp sets, but the carnival cupcakes critters were just perfect for this card.

How:

I started by getting all the colouring done. The critters were straightforward to do, but getting a smooth gradient blend on the number one was harder than I expected; I don’t use the RV Copics that often and some of the ones I chose look almost neon as you lay them down and then settle as they dry, which makes it tricky to know when to stop with the blending.

I really like the Mama Elephant rainbow die — unlike some of the others I’ve seen, this die keeps all the pieces attached so you don’t have to reassemble it on the card. Colouring the individual stripes is simple if you just slip a piece of paper between the one you’re working on and the others.

I had to be a bit creative in finding suitably sized dies that could stand in as balloons for the larger animals as I only have small balloon dies (and one far too huge one).

I trimmed some patterned paper to fit the card base and it was about this point that I decided that there was a major need for lots of sparkle!

First up: some silver detail sparkle around the edge of the patterned paper panel. Then, more of the same ordering the balloons and the clouds.

And while I was waiting for that to dry I found my sparkly acetate and covered the number one with it. Then I decided where I wanted the rainbow to sit on the card, popped it up on some thin foam tape and added the clouds.

About now I thought “glossy accents”, maybe I could make the balloons more balloon-y with some glossy accents… after all I have the glitter outline to stop it overflowing. Cue more waiting. That is a lot of glossy accents and there was no way I was going to risk sticking a finger in not-dry glossy accents this time. Did I mention I was on a bit of a short deadline to get this card done?

Success! We had dry glossy accents and all I needed to do was attach some silver thread for the balloon strings and pop the remaining elements up on foam tape. Part way through doing this — luckily before the bear was attached — I remembered I had a couple of action wobblers that had never been used and wouldn’t this be a good time to try out something I hadn’t used before… Tick, tick, tick, deadline anyone?

Luckily it all went together with no problems and I snapped a shot to post on Instagram. Then my brain said “no! not enough bling yet!”. And that’s where the myriad stars came in.

In spite of all this, I did manage to get the card finished and in the post. Now it’s just down to Royal Mail to deliver it on time…

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Mama Elephant – carnival cupcakes
• dies:
  Mama Elephant – rainbow high
  Sizzix – framelits – basic shapes floral
  WPlus9 – whole lotta happy
• Copic markers:
  bear – E01, E02, E04, E13, E15, E17
  sheep – W00, W1, W3, W5
  bunny – T1, T3, T5, E01, E02, E04
  number 1 – RV04, RV06, RV09
  rainbow – R29, YR07, Y17, YG17, B05, BV08, V09
  clouds – W00, W0, W1
• embellishments:
  Papermania – gem sparkling stars – assorted brights
  Imagination Crafts – detail sparkle – silver gilt
  Ranger – glossy accents
  action wobbler
• paper and card:
  Stix2 – sparkly self-adhesive acetate sheet
  Hunkydory Crafts – adorable scorable
  Glitter Pot – bleed-free cardstock
  Doodlebug – paper pad – kraft-in-color: color
• miscellaneous:
  Brother ScanNCut
  We R Memory Keepers – corner chomper