Ol' Fashioned Birthday Card (07/02/2012)

Sometimes you just need a masculine, old fashioned, yet refined birthday card ... so this is what I did.  Let's meet the card okay-dokey:

This birthday card is for my wonderful cousin, who is very distinguished, an artist, (not that that intimidates me or anything ... sheesh!) and an-all around renaissance man.  I was also inspired by the paint in his house - he created a striped-effect by painting the same, deep, rich jewel tone color with both matte and glossy finish in alternating wide stripes.  I tried to invoke that here, by cutting equal-sized strips, and alternating them with "plain" and "embossed" strips.  I kinda like this effect! 

This is a 5-1/2" square card.  I used an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of cardstock, and cut it into a 5-1/2" x 11" piece.  I scored it at the half-way mark, and then cut the remaining three inch piece into 1" strips.  Then, I cut them into six 5" x 1" pieces.  I placed three of them into a cuttlebug folder and dry embossed them.  I placed the strips on the cardstock and adhered them down.

I used my Cuttlebug and Spellbinders dies to cut out two labels - one in black (staying in the monochromatic theme here) and one in the same cardstock as everything else.  I used the same Cuttlebug embossing folder to emboss the black label, and stacked and adhered the labels to the card, and trimmed off the edge.

To also invoke my cousin, and his artsy and vintage side, I used Lawn Fawn's Just My Type stamp set and stamped out a typewriter on white cardstock, and colored them in with my Copic markers.  I fussy cut out the typewriter, and also used Crystal 3D to highlight the keys.

I stamped the sentiment from the Just My Type Too, and stamped Happy Birthday inside the card, using a sentiment from Sophie's Sentiments. 

I also adhered some ribbon across the bottom to help anchor the images and add some extra pizzazz, without adding much dimension.  I needed to keep this flat since I am mailing it.

I really hope Cousin Brian likes this card. I tried to make a card that reflects his distinguished and playful personality - he is da bomb, and hopefully this little card will help show him how much I appreciate my incredible cousin.

Thanks for stopping by, have a magical day!

Chris