Colourful Happy Birthday

This bright and cheerful CAS birthday card is the first of many cards that I made today. The others are scheduled in to post over the next couple of days. There may not be any for a few days after that, as I’ll be in England!

Anyway, this card is a response to four challenges: Seize the Birthday asked for a birthday card that is bold and bright. The layout comes from My Favorite Things, and the third challenge is also from them – their bonus 10th birthday challenge asked for 10 to be incorporated in some way. I included it by way of the ten strips of colourful paper (although one of them is barely visible in the photos!) I also decided to include Moving Along With The Times‘ no designer paper challenge.
After some thinking I decided it would be fun to use the “happy” panel from the Friendly Expressions thinlits. I die cut that from a piece of black card and set it to one side.

I found the coloured paper for the stripes in a Christmas craft set I have. I’m not entirely sure what the paper is – the box just says transparent paper. It’s kind of like vellum but almost waxy feeling. I sliced  strips from each of the ten colours.

Next I applied foam tape to the back of the black panel. I arranged the strips how I wanted them and pressed the black panel down onto them to adhere them together. The panel was just too small to get all of them, so I applied a line of double-sided tape along the back of the strips to be able to get the outermost ones too.

Next I trimmed the strips down to the length I wanted. I was originally planning on having them stick out at the top and the bottom, as in the sketch, but managed to rip the top ones (don’t ask…) so trimmed them down level with the panel instead. In order to add a bit of interest I trimmed the lower end of the strips to give a stepped, or curved, appearance to them. It probably would have worked better with an odd number! I then peeled the back off the double-sided tape and used that to stick the panel to the front of a white card base.

Next I created the banner to go underneath the panel. I used a snippet of white card and die cut it using the banner from the Carta Bella Forever die set. The banner from the set is one ended, so I used a partial cutting technique to cut each end at a time. I then stamped “birthday”, from Altenew’s Super Script, using Memento Tuxedo Black ink. I didn’t line it up very well… Bit difficult on such a small area! Next time I’d probably stamp first and then cut it out.

I applied tape runner to the back of the banner, lined it up on the card and adhered it to the coloured strips. Then I lifted up the strips and added a line of glue behind where the banner sat just as an extra layer of adhesive to hold them in place.

For the embellishments I decided to stay quite simple. I found a large silver sequin which I cut in half and attached with liquid glue as if it was rising up from behind the panel. I then found a small crystal sequin thing (I’m eloquent today…) which I also adhered with liquid glue.

I’m reasonably happy with how this card turned out. It’s definitely in keeping with the idea I had when I started the process, and it meets the challenge requirements. There are some improvements I could make though. Better stamping on the banner is one, and not having the white strip at the end as it doesn’t show very well again the white card base! I think it would also be nice to include the central parts of the letter. I was planning on doing that but it was quite fiddly and I didn’t have the time to spend trying to do it, so I decided to leave them out this time.

Love,

Lady Joyful