A "Botty" Birthday

More fun with the "Lots of Bots" stamp set! Aside from the excellent art work and tongue-in-cheek greetings, one of the things I love about this stamp set is the ability to customize the colour scheme to match any card stock or patterned paper you may use. For this card I used Brilliant Blue and Pumpkin Pie as my colour pallet, layering solid card stock for the card base with patterned paper from last year's Halloween Designer Series paper. It's proof that the papers included in Stampin' Up's "Holiday" series of 12" x 12" Designer Series Paper can be used for so much more than just holiday crafts - I've used many of both the Halloween and Christmas patterned papers in cards and scrapbook layouts that have nothing at all to do with either event. They're just beautiful patterns that happen to use colours that easily work in holiday projects - very versatile!

After finishing the front of the card with some thin satin ribbon over a strip of Brilliant Blue card stock, I set to work colouring the robots featured on both the front and inside of the card. Watercolouring them using blender pens and ink colours that match my paper made it easy for my little robots match the card exactly... resulting in a perfectly customized little piece of artwork.

Note: the card's inner greeting is featured in the Upsy Daisy stamp set.

Bright, Bold Flowers

To me the colour red is full of life, both passionate and pretty... and it's one of my favourite colours to work with in both cards and scrapbooking. I designed this bold, layered card with the idea of using traditional Christmas colours in a floral-themed card that wouldn't bring the holidays to mind at all despite the pallet of red, green and white. The card base is Whisper White, although it's covered completely with the layers on the front of the card - first a sweet polka-dot pattern from the Real Red Designer Series patterned paper, then a Real Red border created with the Top Note die and the Big Shot personal die-cutting machine. The flowers, leaves and bird were created using the Birds and Blooms Sizzlits die (also cut with the Big Shot), and the greeting comes from the "Yummy" stamp set featured in Stampin' Up's recent Sale-a-Bration mini catalogue.

0

Layering the floral elements on the front of the card using Stampin' Dimensionals gives an incredible sense of depth to the card - the flowers pop out to greet the recipient, almost asking to be sniffed!