First birthday

I've made a couple of cards this week for the same little chap.

The first was commissioned by my friend for her & her hubby to give to their son who is celebrating his first birthday this coming Sunday:

The elephant image was a freebie from CuddlyBuddly which I have a feeling is no longer available. I coloured with promarkers, but sadly wasn't as successful with it as I would have liked. It's passable, but could be better. I heat embossed the balloons with clear glitter EP (unsure of make) & also managed to uncover some balloon brads from deep within my embellies box. The wording was made using a free alpha download from Crafters Companion. I spent ages using the Adobe snapshot tool to copy the letters into PowerPoint & then arranging & re-sizing the words. I have a feeling there was an easier way to do it, but haven't really worked much with .pdf docs.

The biggest problem I had was placement. I had all these words & could I fit them on a card? Nope. Was working with an 8x8 to start with, gave up & moved to a pre-scored blue A4 card & still struggled for at least 2hrs to get it to work. Drove me nuts LOL Yes, I realise the easier solution would have been to go back to the document, shrink the words, print it all out again etc etc. But really couldn't be bothered, so kept moving the elements round, walking away, coming back, moving it around again, walking away again...till it worked.

Then later that evening (Wednesday that is), I came up with this one from me & the family:

This time it seemed to fall into place very quickly. It's approx 6x6 & made quite simply using K&Co papers from their 6x6 Hopscotch pad & a #1 template from the Large Numbers set from Stamps Away. I stamped the words using a Hampton Arts Studio G alpha set & Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink.

I liked the papers so much I wanted to used them on my 16y/o-to-be nephew's card, & was disappointed to find that I have obviously been drawn to the striped design on a previous 2 occasions as I had none left *sigh* I have instead spent some time picking out different background papers for the #16 & may have jut about succeeded - just got to stick it all down later.