City Crafter Challenge - M is for Monogram and Golden Birthday Celebrations

I'm joining the fun over at City Crafter Challenge Blog since Brandy is hosting this week's challenge.  If you haven't joined the challenge - Brandy has sponsored the challenge by offering blog candy, but more on that in a minute.

This card was made at the request of my grandma for my cousin's daughter, Mabel.  Mabel is named after my grandma and she celebrated her 18th birthday on the 18th - a golden birthday celebration.  It is a special occasion and I wanted to give my grandma something extra special to share with Mabel and mark the occasion.

You'll notice the prominence of gold in the design of each frame in this multi-framed card.

The star of the show is the Concord and 9th Monogram stamps.  I borrowed Brandy's set to make this card - she shares graciously!  On each monogram I gold embossed one element and used my Papertrey Ink for all colors.

A gold embossed sentiment on the back, noting that the pearl accents were a must in this color scheme.  Here's a photo of the final, finished card.

I'm going to link this card up over at the City Crafter Challenge this week.  The City Crafters were willing to allow Brandy to host this week's challenge and offer some blog candy to the winner of the challenge.  One person will be gifted an "A is for Awesome" Concord and 9th monogram stamp for joining in the fun.

Head on over to check out the challenge M is for Monogram over at the City Crafter Challenge Blog.

As an extra special treat, Brandy and I will be giving away one set of the Concord and 9th monogram stamp set (same as above) and the coordinating dies to one of you who comment on our blog during any post this week.  Comment on each blog post and becoming a follower for extra chances to win!  We'll pull a name as a random selection for all comments made before midnight MST March 26th.  Wishing you a win at either the City Crafter Challenge and/or here at Contagiously Crafty!

Since they are celebrating Concord and 9th's birthday over at the Time Out Challenge blog, I'm linking up to their challenge, Challenge #105 Our 4th Birthday.

Lastly, I decided to link up to Simon Says Stamp's Work It Wednesday - March post. 

A Golden Birthday Card

We've had a wonderful week on vacation - enjoying Hawaii and island life.  I'm thinking of trying to share some photos of our trip.  Stay tuned.

I had some time to edit photos and decided to use the WiFi to write this post.  My grandmother needed a birthday card for my cousin's kid whose 10th birthday is his golden birthday - meaning he was born on the 10th of June and he will be 10.  I had to whip this card up before I left.



I used my Gansi Tambi Starry Colors watercolors on Strathmore watercolor paper to create the background and my Mama Elephant Birthday Wishes sentiment stamp to keep it simple.  It's for a 10 year old boy - that magic age when grown ups can't possibly be cool enough but the kid is still a kid...   I think the card turned out just as I planned and so is a perfect match for the occasion.  My grandma was pleased for the help.

A Golden Birthday

I've mentioned before that my family celebrates your golden birthday.  This is the birthday where your age matches the day of the month you were born.  My son, Tim, approached me to make a card for his good friend, Jessica, as she was celebrating her golden birthday.  His actual request was to have me help him make a card.  I guess I was too enthusiastic, because I made this with little help from the man.

Here's the details:

• The flowers are stamped using my Heartfelt Creations Arianna Blooms.  The gold is embossing powder and the white is white ink.  Both are stamped onto vellum and die cut using the matching dies.  
• The butterfly is made the same with my Prickly Pear Mini-Butterflies stamp and die set.     
• The leaf was die cut using my Heartfelt Creations Classic Leaf die which I then pressed into my embossing ink pad and heat embossed several layers of gold embossing powder.  I did this by sprinkling the first layer on the wet embossing ink and then heated to melt the powder.  While the powder was still wet, I pressed the image into the leftover powder on my workbench.  Powder clings to the hot image and I heated it up again.  There is probably 4 layers of embossing powder on this image.  The image tends to get very warm, so do this carefully!
• I gold embossed the swirl pattern onto the kraft paper that I had applied white ink to with a dauber.  I first inked through a stencil, but the shape was all wrong so I just kept rubbing the image, smearing the color until it became nondescript.  I also embossed the swirl 2 or 3 times to make the image more shiny and thicker.
• The edges of the kraft paper were embossed by rubbing the edge on my embossing ink pad and sprinkling with gold embossing powder.  I repeated this layer 3 or 4 times and am really pleased with the final look.
• The sentiment was printed out using my computer and printer at home.

I stamped and embossed more gold on the inside.  After my son shyly grinned when I showed him the card, he produced two boxes and asked me to wrap his gifts to Jessica as well.  What is a mom to do?  Certainly the days of asking for my help are limited, so I wrapped them up with some more shiny gold ribbon.  Needless to say, I receive a smiling thank you as he whisked them away, rushing out the door to go to dinner to celebrate.

I'm going to enter this card in the following challenges:

Inspiration Journal's Spring Blooms, what's more spring that butterflies and flowers?

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday Challenge: Simon Says Anything Goes

and Word Art Wednesday's Challenge #176 Anything Goes