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Saturday 21 January 2012

January Blues

When I started thinking about this month's Get Funky! January Blues challenge, I still had last month's Thank You! challenge in mind, particularly the typography that Anice had used on the freebie paper.  I wanted to include the letters of Happy Birthday in individual circles and spent a very happy hour or so hunting online for just the right type to use until I stumbled across 4 Yeo In (from Urban Fonts), which seemed perfectly suited to my plan.


For once, I didn't use the freebie designer paper - although, of course, I have stashed it away for just the right rainy day! - but instead chose two papers from the Birthday Boy collection on the Funky Hand Papercraft Factory Happy Happy Birthday CD.  I manipulated one of them in the Workspace on the CD to have the same design in two different sizes and used another graphics package to colour match the sentiment to the backing paper.

Having printed the sentiment, I commenced upon the time-consuming process of cutting out the letters using a Nestability and my Cuttlebug.  Since there were thirteen letters to cut, I had hoped to be able to use a punch, which would have been soooo much quicker, but didn't have one in the right size.  I was able, though, to use one to cut out the backing circles to give a narrow darker blue border.  Then it was on to the fun messy task of inking the edges of all those little circles and layering them up.  I used a border punch to produce some paper lace and made a 1 cm paper ribbon.  I originally tried layering a circle in the centre of the card but it seemed to take up too much space so I swapped it for a square.  More edge inking and layering followed and I was then ready for assembly.

I chose little buttons over paper flowers for the embellishments and decided not to add thread through their holes, as it looked overly busy.  For the same reason, I put the three colours of the buttons in the same order on each corner, as I couldn't make a random arrangement of them look random.

Since it was obvious what the sentiment said (I hope!), I decided that it would be fun to arrange the letters in a bit of a haphazard manner, which helped a lot as the two words are of such different lengths, and mounted the circles on 1 mm foam pads to give a bit of depth.

IMHO, at least, a simple, pleasing (and certainly blue) card, that could be sent to a guy or a girl, although I'll probably go for the former … and, amazingly, finished, blogged and entered well before the challenge deadline.  That gives me plenty of crafting time to devote to some birthday cards that I've been itching to make, based on my Thank You! challenge design, with the recipient's name in place of the original sentiment.  Should work well, I think, at least for those with short names! And, luckily and very obligingly, that's exactly what my friends and family with February birthdays have.  Watch this space.

9 comments:

  1. oooooh I lurve this card hun!! its fabulous
    Thankyou for getting funky with us this month
    hugs Lou xxx

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    1. Thanks Lou. It's a real pleasure crafting Funky with such fab inspiration. Cat xox

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    2. Cat this card is wonderful. Thank you for sharing with us how you made it. It's always great to get some fresh ideas. Thanks very much for joining in with the Get Funky Challenge Blog this month.
      Anice xx

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    3. Thanks Anice. I find blue a very inspiring colour - nothing "blue" about it for me - and it was great fun finding just the right type to deliver what I had in mind. There are so many fab fonts out there. Cat xox

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    4. Great card and love all the blues! Thanks for entering the Get Funky! Challenge – hope you can join us again next time on the Funky Fifteenth! Get Funky!

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  2. A fab card, very striking and I love the swirly paper and that font too. Ni. :)

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    1. Many thanks Ni. I'll take credit for finding the font ... but the paper is down to Anice: all I did was shrink it a bit. Cat xox

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  3. Fabulous card. Thank you so much for entering your card in the Get Funky! challenge this month (you must have the patience of a saint :))

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  4. Gorgeous Blue card! Thanks so much for sharing with us over at Get Funky - I hope you can play along with our new challenge too!

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