Cardinal Banner

My grandmother loves all sorts of winter birds -- cardinals and chickadees in particular, I believe. So when I won a stamp with cardinals and chickadees on it from Great Impressions, I knew eventually I'd make something for her with it.

Well, Wednesday was her birthday, so a few days ago I finally got around to inking up that stamp, and made her a birthday card. I kept it pretty simple, just a banner with the birds and "Happy Birthday" stamped a couple of times in watermark/embossing ink. I did put some red embossing powder on the final Happy Birthday, but it turned out to be translucent, so it mostly looks brown.

Since the card is red and brown, brown seemed perfectly acceptable.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

• Use it Tuesday Challenge #44: Ink It Up... Finally (this is the first time I've inked up the winter birds stamp)
• Shopping Our Stash Challenge 79: Odds and Ends and/or Waiting to be Used (the winter birds stamp was waiting to be used, as was the watermark ink)
• The Stamp Man: Emboss It (the birds and the final Happy Birthday are heat embossed)
• Pile It On #48: Anything But a Christmas Card (birthday card!)
• Simon Says Stamp: Anything Goes

Supplies:

Bookmarks XXXVIII: Join the Dance

Look, I know we've seen this fairy a lot lately. She showed up in a Saturday State of the Stash post, and then again on my worktable.

Well, now she gets a post (and a bookmark) of her very own.

Now, one of the great things about this stamp is that she isn't at all seasonal. She'll look great among snowflakes, falling leaves, flowers, fruit, whatever you like. In this case, she's a autumnal fairy, joining the dance of the swirling fall leaves. (They are leaves, but not to scale, and stamped all over each other -- I was going more for the impression of a lot of leaves than a crisp image.)

She was stamped in Eggplant, which of course is quite purple, but on the orange background it seems to have lost most of the purple and become a sort of dark rust -- and it's not just the photo, it looks like that for real. I wonder if it actually changed color or it's just one of those optical illusions where your perception of color is affected by colors around it?

This bookmark is made of 100% scraps! The scrap on which I originally stamped the fairy is a remnant of Popsicles in the Park, the scrap of copper cardstock is left over from Copper & Chartreuse, and the shimmery red backing piece is the other half of the backing from To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

For the life of me I can't figure out what earlier project created the brown scraps, but you can see it on my desk yesterday: it definitely wasn't a full sheet of mat. Maybe I cut some off for a project and then decided it didn't work? So somewhere there should be another scrap, the other part of the paper...

I'm entering this bookmark into the following challenges:

• Top Tip Tuesday Challenge 87: Things With Wings
• Use It Tuesday Challenge #41: All About Fall (made with 100% scraps!)
• Visible Image: Inspired by Autumn
• Great Impressions: Fall
• Simon Says Stamp and Show: Rustification (all kinds of rusty reds and oranges here...)
• Party Time Tuesdays #87: Anything But a Card (bookmark)
• Deep Ocean Challenge #36: Anything Goes
• Tuesday Alchemy Challenge #35: Anything Goes
• Crafts & Me Challenge 105: Anything Goes
• Divas by Design Challenge 56: Anything Goes
• The Crafty Bloggers Network Challenge #4: Anything Goes
• House of Gilli: Anything Goes

Even though I haven't used any stamps from the companies kindly sponsoring all of these challenges -- well, if I've entered but not used your stamps, it means I haven't got any and would like to win some!

I'm also linking this up to DL.ART's October Linky Party.

Supplies: (the little strips of brown leafy paper are from DCWV's Autumn Melody matstack, which doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere linkable)