Hi, everyone! It’s the coldest time of year. The sun’s out, but the high pressure makes it even colder. I’m staying warm by not venturing out too much to actually FEEL the cold, but creating cards in the comfort of my craft room. I have a wintery birthday card to share today, using a couple of stamps from Purple Onion Designs.

I stamped Birch using Memento Rich Cocoa ink and colored him with my Copics, before doing some fussy cutting. I knew I was going to have the blue polaroid frame behind him, so I did my best to leave a slim white border around him. I don’t know about you, but when I fussy cut, I find it much easier to cut right up against the line than to leave a white border. I even prefer the look of fussy cutting against the edge, but for him to stand out against the blue behind him, I needed that white. I actually used a pencil to trace around the bunny before cutting, so I didn’t accidentally cut off too much white or create an uneven trim.

I used one of the Precious Polaroids dies from My Favorite Things, as well as a wishes die from Mama Elephant. I die cut both four times from Blue Yonder card stock from My Favorite Things and stacked them for a dimensional look. Directly onto the card base, I used a blender brush from Taylored Expressions with Classic Kraft ink from Papertrey Ink over a Tim Holtz mini layering stencil to create some interest in the background. I stamped selected words from two sentiments from the Warming Winter Thoughts stamp set from Purple Onion Designs using Papertrey Ink Blueberry Sky ink, and turned them into strips using my Cut-align ruler from Misti. That’s my favorite tool for creating perfect little sentiment strips. I glued an additional three layers of card stock strips behind each of the stamped strips, and glued them all on to the front of the card at various angles, to create a full sentence sentiment along with the stacked die cut, which is also adhered at a bit of an angle for a playful look. I finished with a couple of enamel dots from Papirdesign.

I’m woefully short on envelopes to fit A2 cards, and definitely didn’t have any blue, kraft or white ones to go with my card, so I pulled out my A2 V Flap Envelope dies from Simon Says Stamp and created one using scraps of patterned paper from Papirdesign. Blue with snowflakes, can you get any better for a blue, wintery birthday card?

Very limited color palette this time, but it’s no wonder given the size of the image. I also used B90 for the hat, which is a color I’ve made myself.