Whimsy Stamps ~ It's The Little Things

Hey crafty friends, it's my Mummy's 80th Birthday today and we've been out celebrating her in style at a lovely restaurant and treating her as the special lady she is to us all! I'm one of seven children and right there, I think it ought to give a little hint to the special woman our mama is. I don't know how she did it to be honest, seven kids! But we're close and there's a lot of love, most especially for our amazing mum, who has survived our lovely daddy by 22 years! So she's had a lot of time to manage and navigate life on her own, but she's been resilient, determined and joyful. So it's been beautiful celebrating her all together today. My baby sis who now lives in San Diego, came home with her lovely family to be here for this special celebration. So she's been surrounded by a lot of love today and all seven of us kids, our partners and our kiddies. Yes, there were lots of 'special' photos taken today!

I wanted to create a beautiful birthday card for my mum and wanted it to be in her favourite colour, purple. So I hunted through my stash and decided upon the beautiful Slimline Flower Puffs paper as the base for the design. I paired it with a favourite stamp set of mine from Whimsy called Enjoy The Little Things and chose a beautiful sentiment and image to create this card. 

I stamped the image in Memento Olive Grove Ink to stay with the softer tones and lines of the paper. I wanted to avoid the harsh contrast using black would have given. I then coloured the stems of the image in green copic markers and on a separate piece of alcohol ink friendly paper (lightweight Hammermill) I stamped in Memento Sweet Plum, I coloured the flower petals in shades of Copic purples, fussy cut the images and added with liquid glue over the heads of the flowers stamped directly on the patterned paper. I used Sweet Plum Memento ink to add the sentiment too. I matted the slimline paper with a toning purple cardstock along the sides, then popped up the patterned paper image panel on foam, before adhering it over the purple cardstock. I took my time lining everything up. I ran the Sweet Plum ink along all four sides of the patterned paper panel to give it a finished look.

The final little detail on the card was to add some sparkly purple stamen into the main flower centre. I have some lovely sparkly pens from Kaisercraft which had a pen that toned perfectly for this and has a nice thin nib, so gave a good precise narrow line with plenty of sparkle. The pic above shows this in good light. 

My mummy is a twin, so of course I had to create a special creation for them both. We celebrated them together on the 23rd December and these were the cards I gave them both that day. I used a lovely coverplate die from Whimsy for the trellis background, which I popped up on foam for dimension. I liked the white on white with these cards, apart from the pops of colour for each twin. My mummy loves purple and my Aunty Chrissy loves red, so each card was themed to suit. I twisted some lovely sparkly silver ribbon to add a little interest and tucked a couple of strands behind each bloom. I also used a lovely leaf stem cut from silver glitter cardstock to add some interest and ground the blooms. 

I added an '80' from a retired Gummiapan die I had in my stash that had the eight and zero paired together. Chrissy's bloom, I added some red berry like stems to the centre to finish, my mum's I added a fabric lilac bloom to, as the purple of her cardstock was quite dark and I wanted to ensure that it looked purple and not black, the lilac lifted the tone of the card and brought it all together for a fun finish. The die for the flowers is an older, now retired but still very lovely Whimsy Stamps Lily Flower die. 

Today was such a special day with my Mummy, I can't believe she is 80, she certainly doesn't look it! It was incredibly special to have all seven of us kids there today, with our partners and our children all together and so much love in the room! It was such a special day. Thanks for popping in to visit my blog, I hope you've enjoyed seeing the creations I made for my mum to celebrate this big birthday milestone. I'll be back again soon with another crafty adventure, until then, I hope you're enjoying a happy and crafty new year. Hugs xoxo

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