A custom 40th Birthday card and MFT sketchy challenge 199

Evening all,

This morning I received a text from a good friend asking if I would create a 40th Birthday card for his friend. (panic - I LOVE being asked to do a custom card, but I always panic too!) The design brief I was given was 'Pink & Sparkly. She is loves animal print and is a tap dancer'…..Even I know, there is only so much you can include in one card so I discounted the tap dancer part straight away - mainly because I have no stamps relating in any way to tap dancing!

I decided I wanted to use my brand new 'My Favourite Things - By the numbers die.' I had previously seen a fabulous card created by Catherine Pooler where she kept all the numbers joined together and cut the numbers all out together. I decided I wanted to do something similar but I needed to have the 4 and 0 in a certain position on the card and then my OCD couldn't cope with the fact that the 1 was upside down! In the end, I actually separated all the numbers and arranged them the way I wanted for die cutting them.

For the front panel of my card, I decided to have this pink. I didn't want it to be flat pink though so I took a piece of watercolour card and painted it using a combination of Worn Lipstick and Pickled Raspberry and also some Rose Madder watercolour paints to add a darken tone. I tried to go for an ombre effect across the card to give a bit of depth. Once the card was dry (speeded up with my heat tool), I created some paint splatters with gold perfect pearls mixed with water. This began the 'sparkly' stage!

Once it was completely dry, I then arranged my numbers on the card in the order I wanted and ran it through my big shot.

It was time to bring in the 'animal print' element. I didn't have a stamp for this, but I was able to find animal backgrounds that were printable. I opted for a zebra print. (I felt the black and white would be striking against the pink). I printed and trimmed to size the animal print and placed this behind the die cut watercolour card.

I wanted the 4 and 0 to be the main focus, so I die cut those numbers again in gold glitter card. These were set into the 4 and 0 spaces.

I wanted the sentiment of the card to read '40 and Fabulous' - to achieve this, I stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black an & sign from the Uniko Studio All Occasion Sentiments 5 set. I then used my Motex Label maker to make a retro label saying 'fabulous' This was propped up on some foam pads.

The card was finished off with some added sparkle by way of two shades of pink crystals and then some pink and gold sequins. The card was placed on a black base card.

Here is the finished product -

I was just about to do a general post about this card, but decided to see if there was a suitable challenge on the MFT blog. I couldn't believe my eyes when I say the sketch - SO perfect for this card layout!

Don't you just love it when that happens?! 

Thank you for popping over and I hope you will have a look around the rest of my blog - exciting things happening here just now!!

Laura xx

Resources

Cardstock - Black card stock from Papermill Direct, Watercolour card - Daler Rowney, Gold Glitter card - Hobbycraft

Dies - MFT By the Numbers

Ink - Pickled Raspberry & Worn Lipstick Distress inks, Memento Tuxedo Black, Rose Madder Watercolour Paint, Gold Perfect Pearls

Embellishments - crystals from Anita's, Sequins from Hobbycraft.