Birthday Squirrel
Though I’m excited to get back into routine after a wild summer, September is always a crazy time in my home. Every year, I seem to forget how stressful the start of school is for my kids (and therefore also for me!)
To add to the stress, my youngest daughter has her birthday right at the beginning of the month and we usually end up postponing her party so we can get invitations to her friends at school and give the parents time to settle into September a bit before having to jump in to the birthday scene! My card today is the design that she and I came up with for her party invitations.
As always, we started with the As You See It Challenge. The theme this time is “back to basics”.
I think Back to Basics with stamping means no fancy tools, just stamps, paper and ink! I remember when I first started stamping and what supplies I had. I didn’t have a Big Shot or dies. I didn’t even have any punches, yet! I stamped at the dining room table into the wee hours of the night while my new baby rocked in her swing and my toddler was asleep in his crib.
Ah. Good memories!
My 10 year old daughter loves the Foxy Friends stamp set. She requested the squirrel image and the wood stump for her invitations. I stamped the squirrel with Crumb Cake ink and his little face was stamped with Soft Suede ink. I then created a mask using a sticky note so that I could stamp the stump to make it appear as though the squirrel is on the stump. To do that, I stamped the squirrel image on the sticky note and trimmed around the image. Then I placed it precisely over my good squirrel image. With the sticky note in place, I used Soft Suede ink to stamp the stump image to overlap the bottom of the squirrel image. Then I removed the sticky note mask and VOILA!, I had a squirrel sitting on a stump!
Just for fun, I decided to trim down the paper around the squirrel. I used my Stampin’ Up paper trimmer as far as it could go without cutting off the tip of my squirrel’s tail, then I fussy cut around it.
Linen thread is tied in a lovely bow around the top of the Whisper White banner. The banner bottom was hand trimmed with my Paper Snips. The little heart was stamped with Real Red ink and hand cut before placing it in the little squirrel’s hands (paws) with a piece of a Stampin’ Dimensional. The banner was then attached to the Soft Sea Foam card base with more Stampin’ Dimensionals.
Here’s the inside of the invitations. Of course, I still need to add the when and where for the party, but at least we are a few steps closer to getting these invitations to her friends next week.
