Birthday Wishes..

for a very dear friend who is celebrating her birthday today. I made this card for her a week or so ago, and wasn't going to post it till she received it. Guess what? Um yeah, I haven't mailed it yet today, lol. So, it is going in the mail tomorrow and she can still see it today, hehe!

I'm not normally one for the distressed look on cards. I love the look, but never seem to get it just right. Anyhow, for this card I decided to step out of my little stamping box and give distressing a whirl. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out too.

The cardbase is Chocolate Chip cardstock and then over it I mounted a piece of the new Basic Grey Stella Ruby paper. I just love this, and got a great deal on it and the other new BG releases in the 6x6 pads, so I have plenty to play with! *wink* So I took this piece and added a little more distressing to the edges with my Chocolate Chip ink pad. Then I tied some light orange and brown polka dot May Arts ribbon around the piece and adhered it to the cardbase.

On top of this, I mounted a piece of Cameo Coral cardstock that was distressed a TON with the ink pad, stipple brush, and an edge distresser. The photo corner was then added. I made it myself with the 1 1/4 inch square punch and then stamped a flower from the Papertrey Ink Butterfly Kisses stamp set in a random pattern with some rose chalk ink. While the ink was still wet, I used my finger to smear it a bit and make it look even more distressed. The sentiment is also from the BK stamp set. I stamped it in dark brown chalk ink on the bottom of this piece of cardstock.

All that was left was the main focal image(s). The solid base of both butterflies were stamped in chalk inks (Rose and Alabaster) on Shimmery White cardstock. Over the tops of these, I stamped the flowered butterfly image. The pink solid butterfly was stamped with Dark Brown, and the Alabaster one was stamped with a combo of the dark brown and the rose inks.

I then took my paper snips and cut these pretty little guys out, and adhered their bodies to the Cameo Coral piece, leaving their wings free. That's it! Not too bad for my first distressed card, lol.