Art Impressions Blog: A Colorful Birthday Card with a Surprise Inside! by Janet

Hello and happy Saturday! I am so excited to share this colorful birthday card with you. It features several of Ai's newest releases in the store. Here I'm featuring the new 5722 Birthday Journal Set which has stamps and dies with this adorable dog, yummy cake, and the pretty Celebrate word die. I just love the little dog's expression. He's so adorable!

To make this card, I started by using a 5063 Rectangle A2 Double Stitched Die to cut a mat for the card front. Then I used 5061 Square Double Stitched Dies to cut a window and a frame. I also used the new 5721 Nested Heart Dies to cut red and white heart shapes. I stamped, colored and cut the images out and placed them on the white heart. The smaller red heart is also from a die included in the heart die set. I placed the finished heart image over the cut window and secured it with glue where the heart overlaps the window. The stars are birthday table confetti shapes which I glued to the card using liquid glue.

The fun of this card is revealed when it's opened! There's a party in it! I colored and cut the cake, candles, balloons and banners from the Birthday Journal Set. It's so fun to see all of this inside the card. It's unexpected because you think you're seeing through the card because there's a window cut in it. It's all done by strategic placement so that none of the shapes show through the window. There are three super balloons in the 5722 Birthday Journal Set. You can cut these out of colored cardstock or you can color them. Either works well. The banner is also a lot of fun to work with. I made mine very colorful with several Copic marker colors. And how great is that cake? I love the height and size of it which is wonderful in a card but also in the journal pages. The sentiments in the card are from another new set of birthday phrases - 5735 Birthday Sentiments Set.