Stampin Up Gift Tags - Teddy bear birthday card

Hi blogging friends

I have been away on holidays at Bright for almost 2 weeks - our first break since our loved one became ill over 2 years ago.  It was absolutely wonderful to not only spend time in a beautiful setting but to have a complete mental break from doctors, hospitals and medical appointments.  We had lovely, warm weather coupled with thunderstorms and heavy rain and did lots of walking, feeding the ducks (the house we rented backs onto the Ovens River and there are tons of ducks) and plenty of relaxing.  We visited Beechworth which is about a 45 minute drive from Bright and tried lots of different types of honey at Beechworth Honey and came home with a large assortment of varieties:  creamed honey with ginger, creamed honey with cinnamon, blue gum honey and chocolate honey - just to name a few.  You can check out their online store HERE to see their range of products.  I have no personal connection to them but I am very happy to give a plug for an Australian company.   We also went to the famous Beechworth Bakery and had a delicious lunch of their wonderful pies.

I took a whole swag of images for colouring as well as my Tombow pens and watercolour pencils and was able to get alot of colouring done when the weather was stormy.  I find it so relaxing to sit and colour and it was great to have some uninterrupted colouring time without thinking that I should be doing  housework!  I also did a lot of papertole (decoupage if you are in the UK) in the evenings.

Here are just a few holiday snaps:

The famous Farrington's Poplars planted 1960

Farrington's Poplars during a thunderstorm

View of Bright township from Huggin's Lookout

It was sooooooo hard to go back to the school run and the usual chores when I returned home BUT I was very, VERY happy to see our cat Ruby who we boarded in the Cattery as I missed her so much!  And she was extremely happy to see all of us and wouldn't let us out of her sight for the first few days.  I couldn't even go to the toilet without her opening the sliding door and coming in and trying to hop on my knee - LOL!

I used one of the images I coloured when I was away on a birthday card for my sister-in-law:

This cute little teddy bear is from an old retired set from Stampin' Up called Gift Tags which I bought second-hand on EBay ages ago.  Of course, technically the stamps in the set are meant for gift tags but I think this teddy is cute enough to use on a card!  The sentiment is part of the stamp which is very handy!  I love the older style teddy bears by SU as they don't seem to date.

I coloured the teddy with a mix of Tombow pens and Faber-Castell + Lyra watercolour pencils.  I added Kindyglitz Crystalina glitter glue to the present/bow, the heart on the bear, the teddy's bow plus his cheeks.  I lightly coloured around the image with blue chalk.  Here is a wee close-up so you can see the detail a bit better:

The tiny little hearts either side of the sentiment were made using the leftover punchies from my Arrows border punch and I added some glitter to them too.

The main image panel cardstock layers were diecut using a Lifestyle Circle die and a Spellbinders Blossom die and my Big Shot.  I thought the Blossom die matched the flowers on the designer paper really nicely.

The designer paper is by Echo Park:  Sweet Girl - which I picked up from a scrapbooking store about 5 minutes from where we were staying at Bright.  The cardstock base and layers were trimmed to 1/8" and 1/4" using my Perfect Layers Tools.

I glued on the three Sparklets which I bought from EBay a while ago using Helmar Tiger Grip glue.  Lastly, I tied on the 2 different coloured twines and added Fray Stop to the cut ends to stop them from fraying.

Challenges:

I made my card for the following challenges -

Crafty Catz Challenge 224 - Anything Goes
 

For your information:

Note sure if you have noticed but recently I added a 'Pin It' button for Pinterest for my photos so if you hover over my photos, a red P should appear and you can 'Pin' my photos with the correct link to my blog post about my card.  I have a few of my cards on Pinterest that don't have the correct link to my blog post so I thought having the Pin It button might help in that regard for future pins.  Thanks to my Aussie blogging friend Merry from MerryMade Cards and Crafts who did a blog post about how to add the Pin It button to your blog HERE.

Personally, I find it extremely frustrating to click on a Pin on Pinterest and find it is just a generic link to someone's blog or it goes to a Google Image search or the link just doesn't work and you don't know where it came from originally. Personally, I won't re-pin anything unless it has the original link so I usually do a Reverse Image Search to find out where the image came from.  If you don't know what a Reverse Image Search is, there are a couple around:  I use src-img.  There is also Tin Eye and a Google Reverse Image Search.

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a fab weekend!

Jocelyn


Card Recipe:

Stamps:  Stampin' Up! Gift Tags (retired)

Ink:  Ranger Archival Jet Black

Designer paper:  Echo Park Sweet Girl 6" x 6" pad (2012)

Accessories:   Big Shot, Lifestyle Nesting Circle dies, Spellbinder Blossom Nestabilities dies, Tombow Pens, Faber-Castell + Lyra watercolour pencils, paintbrush, Kindyglitz Crystalina glitter glue, Pink Sorbet twine - The Twinery, Yellow twine (from Etsy), Fray Stop, Kaisercolour blue chalk, Sparklets (EBay), Helmar Tiger Grip glue, Perfect Layers Tools, cardstock - buttercream, soft crimson

Punches:  EK Success Arrows border (tiny hearts)