UGH Birthday card

Sure did say lots of bad words last night while putting together my daughter's birthday card.  NOTHING turned out the way I wanted it to!

Anyway, she is turning 20 today and when she was little, I used to call her Manda Panda Monkey Bear - don't understand that at all, but it was something cute that started when she was very little.  I found this adorable set from My Favorite Things in their June release and it was PERFECT.


My Favorite Things HAPPY PANDAS Clear Stamps MFT MSTN10 - $17.99
from: Simon Says Stamp

Those little pandas are just SO adorable!

So I started out stamping the little pandas, a balloon (had to do that one twice), the banner and sentiment on some smooth white cardstock.  I colored the images with my Spectrum Noir markers.  I loaded them on to my PixScan mat, traced the images and added a .080 offset to get a small white border.

This is where it all went wrong.  After loading the images to cut them, I didn't move my Portrait out from the wall far enough and the pixscan had trouble loading all the way, reading the reference marks.  All of the work I had put in coloring and stamping was chopped up.  After a few CHOICE words, I decided to just cut the images out of cardstock without any coloring, stamp and color them afterwards.

Thank goodness for my MISTI tool...

I cut the white images and laid them out on the MISTI tool, carefully placing a piece of acetate over the pieces since they would definitely move and lose their positions.

After some sweating, the stamping came out beautifully - so I got my Spectrum Noir markers out AGAIN and re-colored the images.

To assembly my scene, I used some Ranger Watercolor cardstock and watercolored a background using my Color Theory stamps from Studio Calico.  I cut some grassy pieces from my Silhouette.  Once I had the pandas where I wanted them, I added some foam tape to the climbing panda.  I added some adorable little Enamel accents from
Doodlebug SUMMER SHAPES Sprinkles Enamel Assortment 4579 to complete my card.

I also added some clear Wink of Stella to the balloon and the banner to give it a little shimmer, trimmed down the watercolor piece and adhered it to some light blue cardstock.

You can see, I had some coloring issues with the markers bleeding outside of the lines on my balloon and banner but after two attempts, I was just DONE.  I tried using the Spectrum Noir blender marker but it seemed to have just made things worse.  Oh well...not everything turns out the way we plan.

I'll be back this weekend with some more projects and stay tuned to see what I create for So Suzy Stamps as I am a guest designer for June 28th!

Until then...keep crafting real!