Birthday Fishes

Here's my card for today's SCS featured stamper challenge. My card's based on this simple design here. Since Charlene was an original Mint Motif design team member, I thought I'd go with Mint Motif images for my card. I kept the birthday theme and basic layout of the original design, but altered the other design elements to make my own version of the card.

I used two different Mint Motif sets on my card. The first is the Beyond Borders set. I used it to make my own patterned paper for the bottom of the card. This image made me think of waves, so I used it to create some water for my simple scene. The stamped panel is attached to the bottom of the card base and some turquoise striped twill runs along its top edge, adding some texture and contrast.

Instead of a felt flower, I used a fish Woolie from the Max & Whiskers collection. And, I made my own sentiment by combining parts of two different sentiments from the MM Very Square Sentiments set. I inked the "f" from the "hope you feel better soon" stamp in black ink and stamped it first, then inked the "birthday wishes" part of the set's birthday sentiment, omitting the "w" in wishes. I carefully stamped the image, placing it so that the "f" would replace the "w" to spell "birthday fishes." Successful on the first (and only) try! It seemed to need a little contrasting color thrown in, so I wrapped some orange baker's twine around the card and secured it with a button to finish the design. From start to finish, the card took less than 20 minutes, including experimenting with a few blue-green inks to find a good match, doing all the fussy inking of the stamps, and wrapping and tying the twine. Love when that happens! Gives me plenty of extra time to spend with Chloe the cutie puppy at the dog park. We're on our way now!

Materials Used:
from i {heart} papers: Mint Motif Beyond Borders and Very Square Sentiments stamp sets, Memento Tuxedo Black ink, May Arts turquoise striped twill ribbon, Basic Grey Max and Whiskers Woolie, Jillibean Soup orange baker's twine

other: Hawaiian Shores ink, Hawaiian Shores cardstock, Orange Zest button (Papertrey Ink); white cardstock (Xerox); Corner Chomper