80th birthday

When it comes to greetings cards this year, I have really only been making the ones that I absolutely have to. My energy levels weren’t that great at the start of the year and, let’s face it, no-one’s energy levels have exactly been boosted by subsequent world events. So, I was originally thinking about skipping this one — it was for my other half’s mum’s current husband, and they live in Spain, so there was the whole having to go to the Post Office as well — but then someone mentioned that it was his 80th and, well, I really had to make one for that.

The advantage of men’s big number birthdays is you can concentrate on the big number and not have to worry about it being for a man, other than avoiding pink in the colour palette. I had seen something similar to this while browsing Pinterest, liked it, and decided that it was something I could put together without too much effort.

I used Affinity Designer on my Mac to lay out the numbers, the mat and the card shape, and printed them off separately as templates — so much easier than drawing it freehand. Then I raided my stash for some appropriate patterned papers, cut them out and did a little ink-blending around the edges of the numbers.

Once I had layered the numbers onto the mat, I punched holes around the edges and hand-stitched it with embroidery floss. Then I made the sentiment, stamping with black ink and heat embossing with clear embossing powder (so much tidier than using black embossing powder, which always seems to get everywhere). I also layered some strips of card, vellum and ribbon to go behind the sentiment. A few enamel dots finished the card off.

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Personal Impressions – happy birthday
• inks:
  Versafine onyx black
• embossing powder:
  Wow! ultrafine clear
• embellishments:
  We R Memory Keepers enamel shapes
• paper and card:
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable cotton white
  patterned papers
  Anita’s pastel vellum
  scraps of card and ribbon
• miscellaneous:
  embroidery floss