Off-Balance Bird

I'm not sure how I feel about this card . . . I guess it's the offset oval that is troubling my eye. I just like the elements on my cards to be *straight* (or as straight as my hands and eyes can get them), so I had a really hard time gluing that oval down to this card for today's sketch challenge on SCS.

I started with a piece of paper from the East Coast Prep paper package. I haven't used much of it and thought it would be a good match for the large bird image from A Little Birdie Told Me. I colored the bird with Copic markers to coordinate with the blue dots on the paper. I used the Stamp-a-ma-jig for help with placement of the umbrella and the sentiment. The image was cut out with a classic oval Nestabilities die. These are rounder, or "fatter," than the petite ones, so there's more room for an image. I stamped the umbrella on a scrap piece of cardstock, colored it, and cut it out. It's attached to the panel so it extends just a bit outside the panel. I covered the sections with matching Stickles for sparkle, leaving that for last to minimize the opportunities to smear the stuff everywhere, as I always end up doing.

To fill the empty space at the bottom of the card, I tied a wide red ribbon around the patterned paper. I slid a strip of turquoise cardstock with a row of paper pierced holes under the ribbon because all of the dots looked too busy to me. That helped, but I'm still not sure about this one . . .

Materials Used:

A Little Birdie Told Me stamp set, Real Red, More Mustard, and Tempting Turquoise cardstock, East Coast Prep designer paper, mat pack and paper piercing tool, wide Real Red grosgrain ribbon, dimensionals (Stampin' Up!); white cardstock (Georgia Pacific); Graphite Black ink (Brilliance); oval and scalloped oval dies (Nestabilities); markers (Copic Ciao); Yellow and Candy Cane Stickles (Ranger)