Musical Happy Birthday!

Hi there,

An extra post from me this week. We had a special little lady turn 21 last Monday. She has brought us so much joy over the years - it has truly been a wonder to watch her grow from baby to the beautiful lady that she has become. Her passion is music: handbells and singing, for which she is undergoing a five-year program at Westminster Choir College, NJ. We look forward to seeing what the road ahead has in store for this exceptional young woman!

I wanted to have a music theme for her card, so I started with a burgundy background - purple is Gillian's favorite color! Next I found a lovely piece of music DP, which happened to have some color at the edges, which worked in well with the base card. Found this old Hero Arts Bird Collage stamp which I stamped in Ranger's Archival Ink onto white cardstock. Then I went to town with the Art Anthology Paints (Vegas Gold, Pumpkin Spice, Coral and Leaf) and colored in the bird and the flowers and leaves with those and set it aside to dry.

After it was dry (maybe half an hour at most) I die cut the image with Spellbinders Floral Ovals, and left the die in place while I sprayed the Art Anthology Sprays (Timeless, Wild Orchid and Rustic) over the top. The sprays dry very quickly and then I took the Nuvo Fine Tip Glue Pen and added some Sparkling Snow Glitter to the flowers and leaves on the image. I wanted to add some flowers to the card and I happened to have some that had musical notes on them (though I'm not sure where I got them from!). Anyway, I sprayed them with the same three colors. When they were dry I used a paint brush and applied some Brushable Glue to some of the petals and added Cloud Nine.

I tried to find something with music, but couldn't find anything for the card front, so did this on the inside with Versamark, Black Detail embossing powder and the same three sprays carried over from the front. The row of birds and sentiment is from the Bird Song Set 496 from Sparkle N Sprinkle.

The sentiment on the front was a challenge! I wanted to use the Happy Birthday die, but I wanted to have different layers on the card front, so knew it wouldn't be good to just glue it down. So I took the smaller die from the SB Floral Ovals and sprayed the inside before removing the die, then I used the little oval from the Spellbinders Classic Ovals Large and cut out a scrap of Super Adhesive Sheet. This was then attached to the center of the sprayed floral oval. I die cut the Happy Birthday (from the burgundy cardstock) from Sizzix Thinlits Celebrate and positioned it on top of the adhesive and then applied Cloud Nine Velvet Glitter to the remaining sticky surface.

Then everything was put together. The image was put on first to the music DP, with foam squares. Then the flowers were attached with brass brads. The little ivy stems (Creative Expressions Craft Dies) were cut from white cardstock and sprayed with the same three sprays. Those were tucked under the flowers as shown and then the sentiment was added at the base with foam squares.

I had fun creating this for my special little girl! How can she be 21 already? Sing On and Ring On, looking forward to the ride, Gillian!

I'd like to join the following challenges:

Scrapy Land: Anything goes #57 (Using dies that Scrapy Land sells)
World Wide Open Design Team Challenge #18: Anything Goes
Seize the Birthday: Anything Goes