Happy 70th Birthday Dad!

Life has been very busy lately and my crafting time has been limited to necessities only, like the cards I made for my Dad's 70th Birthday (one from me & Rich and one from Phoebe).

I knew I wanted to put a funny Lion on my card as my Dad loves silly animals and is a Leo. Looking at my stamps, I realised I could use the leaf in the 'French Foliage' stamp set to make the Lion's mane. I set about stamping lots and lots of leaves in Cajun Craze onto Daffodil Delight cardstock. I cut each leaf out and assembled the Lion. The face is made using the scallop circle punch and the extra large oval punch. His body and legs are made using the decorative label punch and modern label punch. I've added his features and claws with the Basic Black marker and given him a shiny wet nose using Crystal Effects.

The main card is made using Riding Hood Red, Early Espresso and Pumpkin Pie cardstock. The sentiment is from 'Perfect Punches' and fits the XL Oval punch perfectly. I love that stamp set, it has sentiments that cover so many occasions and they all co-ordinate with Stampin' Up! punches too.

My Daughter, Phoebe, was keen to make her own card for Grandad and so we set about the very messy task. Phoebe is what you might call a 'hands on' crafter...

She made a great job of creating lots of different coloured papers for me to work with and a super handprint to use as a main image. I think I have a future Demo on my hands ;) Needless to say 'Grandad' absolutely loved the card and was in stitches at the photos and video of Phoebe creating it.

Simply Stampin' Challenge #16

I was really happy to discover that there is a Challenge blog especially for fans of Stampin' Up! products and couldn't wait to make and enter a card. This week's challenge is to make a card based on this sketch...

Seeing those flowers reminded me of a project I'd seen recently (on Sarah-Jane's Cards and a cuppa blog) and wanted to try; Scalloped Fan Toppers.

First I made my toppers using patterned papers from the Jolly Holiday DSP pack with Night of Navy CS and Very Vanilla CS. The large topper has been stamped using the french script and ink blot stamps from the 'French Foliage' set and the bird stamp from the Hostess set 'Silhouette Sentiments'. The smaller topper uses the ink blots again with the Paris postmark stamp, again from 'French Foliage'.

The base card is Cherry Cobbler CS layered with Night of Navy CS. I've stamped a wide strip of Very Vanilla CS with the 'Bella Toile' background stamp in Crumb Cake and added a narrow strip of the same DSP I used for the large topper. A piece of co-ordinating wide striped grosgrain ribbon finishes it off beautifully. Oh, nearly forgot the sentiment! It's from 'Perfect Punches' and is stamped in Night of Navy on Very Vanilla, cut out by hand and mounted onto a piece of DSP I punched out using the Oval Extra-Large punch.

I think it's quite 'Parisienne Chic' if I do say so myself ;)  Wish me luck!