My nephew recently turned 25 and I made him a personalized card and gave it to my sister to give to her son when she went up to visit him this past weekend. Unfortunately, she misplaced the card (and the birthday check inside) so my nephew never received it. The true gentleman, he is, he called me to thank me for the card and gift. To let him know how proud I am of the amazing adult he has become, I wanted to make him another card (and this time I’ll mail it to his new address).<\/p>\n

<\/a>I made this mostly single layer card by stamping out the beaver from the\u00a0Whimsy Stamp set “Furry Friendship.” I then created a mask to put over the stamped image so that I could use the Balzer Designs “Mini Heart Swirls” 6×6 stencil<\/a><\/span> and blend on Tim Holtz Distress Inks in Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean and Blueprint Sketch. I thought the hearts and swirls could kind of reference water on which the beaver could build a dam. LOL I created an ombre look, going from light to dark blues in an oval form around the cute little beaver.<\/p>\n

For the beaver, I used the following Copic colors:
\nBeaver body: E70, E71, E74; Beaver belly: W1, E40, E81
\nLog and twig: E23, E25, E29 and E74
\nLeaves: YG61, YG64
\nBeaver tail, feet and hands: E23, E25, E29, W5, W7, W9
\nCheeks and ears: R30<\/p>\n

To add a little interest, I die cut a dotted strip from the MFT Die-Namics Blueprint 15 die set<\/a><\/span> a couple of times and glued them stacked together to make it a little more sturdy. Then I blended on the same\u00a0Tim Holtz Distress Inks in Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean and Blueprint Sketch to create an ombre look on this strip. I added this to the right side of the card, and I think that balanced out nicely the visual weight of the dark beaver’s tail on the left side of the card.<\/p>\n

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For the sentiment, I used VersaFine black onyx ink to stamp out “you’re chewly special” from the stamp set, and I used Charcoal Zing! Embossing Powder<\/a><\/span>\u00a0(it looks black in the pictures, but there is a slight softness to this charcoal that complements the softer look of the card design) to heat emboss the sentiment on a strip of vellum. I used Glossy Accents to glue the vellum into place in a couple of spots and then to camouflage the main glued down area, I used Pretty Pink Posh Clear Droplets in 4mm<\/a><\/span> and 6mm<\/a><\/span> to add some finishing touch sparkly embellishments. I thought these droplets also echoed the watery background nicely.<\/p>\n

The following is a start-to-finish video of creating this card:<\/p>\n