BIRD HOUSE EASEL BIRTHDAY CARD

 

Cousin Mildred will celebrate her 80th birthday this week, so she deserved a special card.

How cute is this easel card that's shaped like a bird house?  The dies that I used to cut the bird house and those adorable birds are from Poppy Stamps, but all other products are from Stampin' Up!  In the photo below, you can see how easily the easel portion folds into shape.  I used fringe scissors to cut a grassy border to give the front of the card a place to rest.

And another view of the card on display:

I love that the die impresses a texture on the front of the bird house and, as you can see, this neat little card folds flat for mailing.  BTW, the leafy branch was cut from Pear Pizzazz cardstock, and then I used an Early Espresso marker to color the branch portion.

Let's talk about those adorable flowers.  I punched them in assorted colors using the soon-to-be-retired Confetti Flowers punch and then shaped them with a couple of McGill flower-shaping tools that I have had and loved for years!  It isn't really necessary to shape the flowers since they get flatten during mailing, but I like to hope they maintain a little bit of the shaped dimension.  After the flowers were punched, I laid them on a foam pad (the Simply Shammy might work for this) and used the appropriate sized ball tips of the McGill tools to shape each flower and leaf.  Did you notice the cute ladybug?  It's adorable on this card!

The sentiment that I chose is from the Quite Curvy stamp set.  It's perfect, right?

I didn't have an envelope in the perfect shade of yellow, but I thought this one would suffice.  It, too, was decorated with images from Quite Curvy and colored with Stampin' Blends.  Lately, I have really been enjoying those alcohol markers!  Interestingly, I have spent a small fortune on an assortment of Copic and Prismacolor alcohol markers in the past, but the absolute EASIEST to use (for someone who wants to just pick up markers and start coloring) have been Stampin' Blends.  I still have my Blendabilities from Stampin' Up! and use them along with the Blends.  The more I use Stampin' Up!'s alcohol markers, the more I appreciate that there's no guess work . . . you choose your color, and then apply the light and dark shades of that color to your stamped image and get beautiful blending and shading.  

Stampin' Up! products used to complete this card:

Dies:  Birds & More, Little Numbers (retired)

Punches:  Confetti Flowers, Bitty Blooms 

Stamp Set:  Quite Curvy

Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Blends, Early Espresso Stampin' Write Marker

Cardstock:  Thick Whisper White, So Saffron, Pear Pizzazz, Highland Heather, Gorgeous Grape, Poppy Parade, Mossy Meadow, Balmy Blue

Tools:  Fringe Scissors (retired), Stampin' Blends

Accessories:  Ladybug Trinkets, White Baker's Twine