Hartelijk gefeliciteerd!

My Brother In Law's birthday is tomorrow. He's one of the hardest people to buy for. If you ask him what he wants he says nothing or comes up with something stellar like Tim Hortons. So its tough to come up with something unique that he will actually like and get some use out of.

Trying to make a birthday card for him is almost as tough. He's a manly man type of guy. He's a hockey player so tough is a pretty good word to describe him. So making a card with all kinds of fancy paper, sparkles, and ribbon is sort of out of the question.

A few days ago I had a bit of an epiphany. He and my sister are moving to the Netherlands in September. He loves soccer. World cup is on right now. So best conclusion is buy the guy a Dutch World Cup Soccer Jersey. And with that it made my card making a little bit easier.

I found this cardhttp://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/1735673?&si=simply repeated on Splitcoaststampers and used it as my inspiration. Not to frilly, simple colours, simple design. Here's what I came up with:

I decided to go with the whole Netherlands theme. I went with the Orange background, because as anyone who has watched any kind of international sports knows, the dutch are usually decked out in orange (its the colour of their royal house). I used embroidery thread using orange again and two of the colours from the flag of the Netherlands, the third colour white is of course the background. The ink I used for the stamps was blue and I coloured in the cupcake with orange and red, again going with the whole theme. Of course I had to throw in just a little bling. What's a birthday card without bling? So I used a little tiny silver embellishment to top off the cupcake.

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I would have been even more happy if I hadn't messed up the happy birthday stamp, but this was the third time I'd made this (thanks to four little busy hands attached to a 4 yr old and 2 yr old, who like to draw on things they aren't supposed to) so I just went with the screw up

Stamps: SU Big Bold Birthday, SU Bitty Basics

Ink: SU Night of Navy

Paper: Recollections cardstock.

With Sympathy - Mojo 144

I have been totally neglectful in posting pictures of my handywork. I've made a bunch of cards in the last little while, just haven't taken pictures of them, and haven't taken the time to post anything about them.

I needed to make a card and couldn't decide what to do, so I decided to turn to Mojo Monday for inspiration. This is this week's sketch:


\ Last night we got news that one of my husbands uncle's had passed away. We had no idea that he was gravely ill. We had known for a while that he was ill, just not anywhere close to knowing the full extent of his illness. So, not really a happy moment to make a card for, but nonetheless I wanted to make a handmade card to express our sympathies to his aunt.



I decided to use green as my main colour. I didn't want to go too bright so I chose to use a bit of a muted celery green in a criss cross pattern as the main background colour of the card. I mostly chose the green because I didn't want the card to be too gloomy, I wanted it to have a bit of brightness to it. I chose to tone down the green a bit by using a few brown accents.

This was the first time I had the occassion to use this Verve stamp set (thank goodness it was the first time, its not really great to have to use it), but I think that the sentiments that are with it, and the simplicity of the stamps really lends itself to the occassion for which the card was made.

I'm quite happy with the way that it turned out, even though its with a bit of a heavy heart that I made it.

Paper: Bazill Basics Petty Cash & Suede Dark Brown, Martha Stewart
Ink: SU Old Olive
Stamps: Verve Forever In Our Hearts