Birthdays Begin With B #3 -Love & Sympathy CTC#133

Welcome back to another blog hop with the crew from CASE-ing The Catty. Do keep on hopping along, to see what else the crew are sharing. Our challenge this week is to CASE from the NEW Annual Stampin' Up!® catalogue, Love & Sympathy section, from page 86-101. I chose to focus on page 98, for a simple sketch and using Best Birds -again! This card falls within the Love & Sympathy pages, and it's for my youngest, who I do love. All along, I've been trying to find the perfect card for my son, who is a bird fancier (and so is his girlfriend!) Each weekend they seem to go out all over Melbourne, visiting locations where they might sight some elusive species. And the title of this post? Well, I noticed that when I began to make my June birthday cards, all the stamp sets, coincidentally began with 'B'. You can see Beautiful You here, and Bella and Friends here.

Originally I made the two birds pictured above, inked them and everything but it felt 'too pretty'. Maybe it will suit Kirsten better when her big day rolls around. I stamped with grey archival ink as its waterproof and watercolored a more realistic bird. There's a die to cut this one too. This picture used the embossing paste too, and I guess it would have been fun to try that too.

When it came to twine, the burlap ribbon was more to my liking, and it sort of goes with the cross-hatched background stamp. There are a couple of branches on my card, they've been lightly water-coloured too.

Five For All was a 'must buy' for my wish list when the catalogue went live. I don't mind a slightly humorous sentiment, but my husband looked it over and immediately saw '25' and informed me our son isn't 25. He's telling the mother this...! In case you can't read it, it says, "You're not old! You're 25 ....plus shipping and handling." That's pretty funny isn't it?

I'm loving the wood grain paper, and I've ordered a second pack so I don't run out unexpectedly. So many different shades and grains are included in these 6 inch square paper pack. I'm hoping that it is masculine enough, because the colours are still quite soft. You will find heaps of inspiration in the Stampin' Up!® Annual catalogue. I've just received another shipment of catalogues, so if you're in Australia and needing one, let me know. Otherwise, it is available online. You can shop online anytime too.

Next stop along on this hop is Krissy Buck and her adorable project

Happy crafting

Rachel