Birthday Easel Card

With my mom's birthday coming up the challenge at Celebrate the Occasion was a timely one. This week CTO is asking us to make birthday cards using the easel fold technique. If you've never made an easel card before check out YouTube. A simple search for "easel card" will yield a plethora of videos to help you out.

I knew I wanted to keep this card simple. My mom's not really a fussy person and I wanted the card to reflect her style.

I used Bazzill Basics Sand for my base and covered the decorated areas of the card with Bazzill Bling Chocolate. I used ki Memories Enchanting paper pack for the mat and used Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page Cherish to create the shape.

For the flower I used more paper from my ki Memories stack and this technique. The only heart shape I could find was on my Doodlecharms cartridge. I cut 6 hearts at 2.25, 5 at 2, 4 at 1.75 and 3 at 1.5. After punching a small hole near the tip of each heart I layered them on a brad from Oriental Trading. Once they were all layered I lifted the tops of the hearts one-by-one up around the brad scrunching it up as I did. When all the hearts were lifted I folded them down quite a bit to create a really open rose.

For the sentiment I used a new-to-me technique that was featured in a recent Archiver's email. Instead of using ink I used acrylic paint in light pink by craft smart. I like the texture it created and it was fun to experiment with (you can expect to see more projects using this technique in the future). The stamp set I used was Dandelion Wish by Stampendous.