Birthday card for Kai

Kai is our much loved honorary daughter - and also the Mum of Mia and Livi (Len's granddaughters). She recently had a Birthday and Len suggested I ought to have an owl on the card I was planning to make for her. Huh, she adores owls and of course I'd taken my best owl stamps to give to her when we had the card making spree in Germany fairly recently.

Then, I remembered the brilliant Stampin' Up 'Owl' punch! Good ole SU to the rescue :)

The card I made is very much based on an old one I found on Pinterest - needless to say I can't find the link again. Anyhow, hats off to whoever designed this card originally, it's such a simple design but I do think it's very effective - this is my version:

I used:

- 5" x 5" off-white card  blank, side opening

- snippet of blue card which was die cut using one of The Works 'Stitched Squares' dies

- snippet of green card, die cut using a very old die by Marianne Creatables 'LR0120' (one of those with the release foam) in dating back to when I very first got a Cuttlebug) - and put to one side

- snippets of brown, beige, cream and black card to punch out the various elements of the owl so I could look at him and decide on the size of the moon to position the sentiment (as you do) - then popped into a deep plastic lid to keep them safe whilst I made up the owl, using a glue pen

- the moon came next and I used a square of cream card in the Misti to stamp the sentiment using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' and a stamp from the LOTV 'General Greetings - Small' set of stamps (still an old favourite!). Often it's easier to stamp a sentiment and then die cut afterwards rather than the other way round - err, and I really meant to use a dark brown for the sentiment but hey-ho - my hands were ahead of the brain!

- used a die from the Tonic Studios 'Circle Layering' set to die cut the moon

- so now all the elements were done and first of all I glued the blue background to the card front, using Collall All Purpose Glue

- then laid it all out and glued the leafy branch in place using a fine glue pen (I'd already trimmed quite a few curls and whirls from the branch before I was happy)

- next came the moon, making sure the sentiment was as level as possible - glued in place using Collall All Purpose Glue again

-then it was the turn of Kai's favourite - the owl. I added it to the branch using thin sticky pads just to add a bit of dimension

- Len peeked in the craft room just as I finished and said it was lovely (his idea of course) and suggested maybe I ought to add a heart! So funny, the punch has a little heart as one of the elements so I punched one from a tiny snippet of red card and added it with a glue pen - and it made a real difference having the little pop of red

Got top marks from Mister Len - whoop, whoop! Or should that really be hoot, hoot?! And Kai loved it too :)