Loads of Birthday Wishes

My husband's nephew was born on my father-in-law's birthday which also happens to be the same birthday as one of my nieces! Because I like to make each card especially suited to the recipient, that means I have to come up with three very different ideas each October 11. I do try to get a head start whenever the mojo is flowing, and I was able to use a few pieces that I had made earlier which did help things along this year. 

For my first card (the one for my father-in-law), I was once again inspired with the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches. It kind of morphed into a bit more than the sketch, but that certainly was my inspiration for this card! For my focal image, I used a pick-up truck that I had colored awhile back while practicing with my Prismacolor colored pencils. I usually use Copics to color my images, but I actually like the 'grainy' texture the pencils brought to the truck. I then stamped and colored the gift packages to add to the truck. I fussy-cut both images out, which is quite easy to do. I grabbed an orange-gold rectangle leftover from a Thanksgiving place card project then stamped and embossed a sentiment from the coordinating die set onto it. I still had some leaves from my previous card lying around, so I used these as little bushes/trees for some added interest (and to add a somewhat rounded look to more resemble the circle of the sketch). I was going to stencil a very subtle cloud background, but I thought the rectangle was too plain, so I opted for cloud diecuts instead. I also added a few puffs of smoke by stamping pieces of popcorn that I inked with Hickory Smoke Distress Ink. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies Used:

Stamps: Honey Bee Stamps: Little Pickup and Sending You Sentiments, Sunny Studio Stamps: Autumn Splendor, The Stamps of Life: popcorn2stamp

Dies: Sunny Studio Stamps: Autumn Splendor, Nestabilities Rectangles, My Favorite Things: Cute Cloud Outlines

Coloring: Distress: Various, Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils