Hello crafty friends! I wanted to share this card that I made for the ScrappyShak Design Team. I was inspired by the Sizzix Celebrate Colorize die set by Tim Holtz. And, it just so happens to be my hubby’s birthday next week! SHHHH! Don’t tell…. it’s a surprise!

After picking the die set, and the format for the card (slimline), I started working on a color scheme. At first I thought red and blue, because I just had to have a red balloon (I’m a Stephen King fan). But I didn’t want to be all July 4th red and blue. Also, in an effort to keep it simple, I decided to go through my paper stash instead of inking paper myself. I found some lighter blues that seemed to work together for the hat (you need 4 shades). I found some lighter mint green paper that I liked for the present, but I only had two shades of paper. I got another shade by blending a little Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink onto the lighter paper. I also didn’t want all the colors to be too light, like baby colors, so I picked a darker yellow.

I assembled the party hat, the present, and a couple balloons. The rest should be easy, right? Pick and background and a sentiment, and boom! you’re done! Well, this was the hard part for me. I decided to have three parts to the design, the hat, the present, and the balloons. To anchor them, I cut out 3 rectangles with an older dies set – Stacked Deckle. You could also use the Deckle Trimmer to cut similar squares or rectangles, or use any other geometric die you have. I can’t even remember how many different colors I cut before I settled on off-white. I tried black, white, green, darker blue, lighter yellow, light orange… nothing seemed to look good behind all of the diecuts. I also tried to add texture to the off-white rectangles with an embossing folder, but that just got too crazy busy in my opinion for this card. The light orange for the rectangles wasn’t so bad. That’s when I thought maybe orange would be a good background.

Before gluing anything down (I’ve learned my lesson!), I was trying to find a place for a sentiment. Nothing seemed to fit. I had an idea to use “HBD” instead of spelling it out, so I started playing around with the new Alphanumeric Bulletin dies. What colors? Here we go again… but, it’s just paper! After walking away a few times, I convinced myself red would balance out the balloon and make it seem not so out of place. I used yellow for the outline. These things are tiny! You will want to either back your cardstock with double sided adhesive before you diecut the letters, or make sure you have some good, thin, glue with a precision tip applicator. I love my Bearly Arts glue. It worked great for this.

After I got the HBD aligned as good as I could and glued down, I played around arranging the other diecuts. I decided to add another balloon – blue. I attached the dies to the card using foam tape for dimension.

I don’t usually make slimline cards. My mind words in A2. But I felt I needed more space to add all the elements I wanted to add. For the base of the card, I cut an 8.5″ by 7″ piece of Neenah Classic Crest Solar White in 110lb, and folded it half. The orange base was 8.25″ by 3.25″. I built my card design on the piece of orange cardstock, and then glued the panel onto the base.

This really wasn’t a difficult card, it just took me a while (days) to figure out the colors, mostly. I wanted a color scheme that would not be absolutely feminine, but could be used for anyone. And, I wanted it to be fun! I will be making duplicates of this card while I have all of my paper scraps out. It does go together fairly quickly and easily. When I do finish a card that I start from scratch, and I’m happy with the results, I like to make a few more to have on hand. Then it seems like the time I spent figuring it out was well spent! (of course it was well spent, I enjoyed it!)

Thank you for stopping by my blog, I appreciate you!

Products used, available at ScrappyShak:
Tim Holtz Sizzix Celebrate Colorize dies
Tim Holtz Sizzix Alphanumeric Bulletin dies
Distress Ink Pad – Cracked Pistachio
Bearly Arts Glue with precision tip

Also used:
Tim Holtz Sizzix Stacked Deckle dies – try the Torn Edge Deckle Trimmer instead