It's Not Sponge Bob Square Pants!

I needed a birthday card for our youngest grandson.  His birthday is today but we aren't seeing him until tomorrow so thankfully I get extra time to work on it.

I had pinned a cute card on Pinterest which was made to look like Sponge Bob Square Pants.  This happens to be one of the characters that Kaleb really likes.  We even bought him Sponge Bob clothing as part of his gift while we were away.  But despite my best efforts I don't always end up doing the things I plan to.

Then again I knew once I got my hands on the North Shore stamp from Waltzing Mouse (just £3.99) that it would be perfect for a card for one of the boys (this was my reason for buying it in the first place).

Since I also had in mind to make a tag with this stamp (though I had denim in mind and that's nowhere to be seen on my card!) I found myself playing the Waltzing Mouse Sketch Challenge again this week.  Of course you always have creative license as long as you abide by a couple of simple rules so I think I about covered it.

And this is my somewhat 'over exposed' shot of the resulting card.  It looks way more pinkish red than it actually is - in fact it's on a deep red (almost burgundy) background!  I took my shot outdoors in the bright sunshine and luckily just before a sudden down pour that's just taken place.  A few minutes later and it would've been ruined!

In real life it actually looks much darker and quite boyish.  I chose to make my tag the main feature of the card but I wanted it to at least say 'happy birthday' somewhere on it so I added it like a label down the side of my tag.  The button says 'celebration' and is kept in place by brown waxed thread, the ticket is by Tim Holtz I believe and I added hardware like staples and screw eyelets in keeping with the masculine theme.  I used my new WMS chicken wire stamp in part of the background and although you can't tell from my shots I used black ink and then heat embossed using clear embossing powder on all my stamping.

I'm really pleased for my first attempt with this new stamp!  Is it okay to say that?  I don't usually do masculine cards well but I think I'll be glad I have this stamp set.

I think Kaleb will love it but I must confess it's somewhat flawed.  As a last minute thought I wanted to add a series of eyelets but I couldn't see my mark when I was punching the holes.  I had to 're-punch' one hole and now there is a tiny gap where my eyelet is offset.  My hubby just came home from work - he's looked at it and he didn't notice so Kaleb might not either - you know since they're both guys. LOL!  It's too late to do the card over again now so it will just have to do.

Since the card base and envelope are kraft coloured, I plan to wrap his gift in brown wrap and I have a second repeat stamped image to generate another tag so it matches.  Hopefully tomorrow we can get a cake sorted to help him celebrate his birthday - and maybe even a BBQ if the weather obliges.

Enjoy!

Suezie