Hawaii Five-O Birthday

It was a new one on me when I came across folk referring to 50th Birthdays as Hawaiian, as in 'Hawaii Five-O' :) It tickled me so much that when a pal of mine had her 50th Birthday recently, I just couldn't get the idea out of my head.

This turned out to be one of those great ideas that takes forever to measure, fiddle around with and make, but dogged stupidity determination kept me going - and this was the result- the best I could do:

I used:

- 5" x 7" white card blank, tent style (in fact, I had to cut the card blank marginally larger so that the white border would be there, as well as the die cut 'Happy Birthday' fitting properly as it's probably better suited to a 6" width card)

- the image is a Stampendous cling stamp called 'Hula Kiddo', stamped with Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and then the word 'aloha' stamped using a Denami Design stamp (no name) and Memento Brilliance' Sky Blue' ink (me not daft, did all the stamping first before colouring!)

- coloured the image using Pro markers, plus a Whispers pen for the fine lines of the grass skirt - then set aside it whilst I fiddle faddled around with the main body of the card front

- I'd already chosen the plain and patterned card/paper before colouring the image so I could match the colours so the next step was to work on the 'Happy Birthday' panel

- first I die cut the 'Happy Birthday' using the Memory Box 'Grand Happy Birthday' die and a snippet of yellow card (SU's 'So Saffron'), which was backed with Stick It adhesive sheet

- next stuck the 'Happy Birthday' onto a snippet of SU's 'Marina Mist' card and then trimmed the top and bottom of the panel to suit

- I remembered seeing Kath inlaying the 'lower line' letters in a Christmas card the other week and thought it gave a really nice finish so I backed a little snippet of the blue card with Stick It and die cut the word 'birthday' again so I could copy her :)

- then, using leftover sticky backed snippets of the backed yellow card, I die cut '50th' using Memory Box 'Classic Numbers' and Tattered Lace 'Alphabet' dies and added it to the card

- next, very carefully, trimmed the greeting panel at either end along with the patterned paper, which is from Bo Bunny's 'Barefoot and Bliss' paper pad, to exactly the same width and glued them to the front of the card blank

- went and had a lie down due to the stress

- the image layer almost had me stumped earlier on in the process when trying out the bits and bobs to see if they would work. I tried every single die set I possess to get the best match and also to leave a decent amount of the floral backing paper visible. Lots of whistling and looking at the ceiling for inspiration - in the end I plumped just to trim the image into a rectangle then layer it onto slightly bigger pieces of yellow and blue card

- went and had a lie down due to the stress

- glued image panel to card front

- rummaged through a box of flowers and found absolutely what I wanted, a lime green flower (with the writing already on it, cool) through which I poked a brad - then glued the flower in place using hot glue gun. Burnt finger in process :(

- went and had a lie down due to the stress

- took envelope for 5" x 7" card out of the (one of many) envelope boxes and thought, let's try this for size to be sure. Card did go into envelope, but refused to come back out without ripping envelope apart - whaaaaaaaaat?!

- card had to be sent with instruction to 'rip envelope open' as once in that little perisher wasn't gonna come out without a fight

- had a final lie down, due to the stress

Pssssst, I was out and about most of yesterday so if I haven't nipped over to check out your Playground entry yet I'll be there soon!

Di
x