Embossed Birthday Card

Hi everyone hope you are having a good day. February is such a short month and it seems like I'm always behind in making cards for those with a February birthday. Thankfully my good friend's birthday is the end of the month instead of the beginning and if I get the card in the mail today he should have it by his birthday.

In the meantime I am going to have to do something about Buddy as he is pouting because JR got his picture on the card and he did not. Alas because of his coloring I have not been able to do a print and cut of him yet. It is not for the lack of trying. I guess I could have put a party hat on him also in Photoshop and cut the image of him out by hand.

Originally I was going to cut out a fancy window for this card. However I discovered once I embossed the birthday panel to go in the window that the Happy Birthday did not all show. Oh well I can use the card base for another card. So I ended up cutting a rounded rectangle window and decided to make the card with rounded corners. Since I didn't know how the window was going to work with the embossed panel I cut this out of some heavy gray cardstock I've been trying to get rid of. I figured since the card is for a man and since I decided to use my metallic color pencils to go with the gray.

I embossed using Quickutz-Goosebumpz Happy Birthday metal embossing folder. Lol! I found instructions on one web site that had the folder for sale that said to use the embossing mat with the folder after I had already embossed. I found using the shim plate in my eBosser that it worked perfectly. I have also once used this folder in my Big Shot using a shim so if you can find the folder it will work in more machines than the Revolution.

I saw a scrap of pattern paper on my desk leftover from Christmas crafting and decided to emboss on that instead of plain cardstock or paper which I usually emboss on. I then took out my metallic colored pencils and colored in part of the cake and the letters. For the rest of the cake I brushed on glue and sprinkled Martha Stewart coarse crystal glitter on it.

The image of JR is from a photo I took a few years back and in Photoshop added the party hat. I had turned the background transparent to use it in a collage. Because I had done that it was easy to turn the image of him into a print and cut. I was going to put the image of him in all four corners but ended up with such small images to fit them in that I went with two larger images instead . I was originally going to put just one image of  him centered at the bottom but his hat covered some of the letters and I would have had to once again make him too small. I could have left JR off the card but I know how much my friend loves the dogs and pictures of them. Besides I figured the card needed to look more festive.

The emphasis this week for My Creative Life is colored pencils or water color pencils. It was fun to take out my metallic color pencils and use them. Normally I have not been happy with the result I've gotten using them but I will keep them in mind to use with something embossed as I think they gave the card a touch of elegance dressing up the cake and sentiment.

Thank you for stopping by and do come back. I don't know what I'll be doing next besides finishing cleaning off my work space in the Play Room. Lol! Maybe something else on the desk will spark more creativity.

Wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!