Nautical Birthday

  Happy Wednesday!!  It's time for another challenge from The House That Stamps Built.  This week the challenge is: The Birds and the Bees.

And here is the card I created:

As I was searching for a stamp to use for this challenge, this little pelican caught my eye, so I decided to create a nautical, masculine birthday card.  I pulled out a never before used anchor stencil and inked it up with some blue ink.  Then I used the postcard stamp and light gray ink to give it a subtle pattern.  I die cut the panel with a stitched rectangle die and inked the edges with the same light gray ink.  For the striped panel, I used a diagonal line stencil and colored in the stripes with a red and a blue marker.  Then I inked up the edges with the light gray ink.  I created a "porthole" with a circle die and a stitched circle die layered together to create a frame.  I used a third stencil to create the waves in the background of the shaker element.

My sister saved me from a big mistake: The anchor stencil has an alternating pattern of downward facing anchors and top facing anchors, but when I add the striped panel, it covered up the one row of anchors that was opposite the two that are showing.  I didn't notice and I had the circle element all cut and was getting ready to adhere the whole card together when she pointed out that the anchors were upside down!  Ugh!!  I already had the back panel (with the waves and the sentiment) adhered to the card base, but I was able to carefully detach it and flip it the other way.  Disaster averted!

Thanks for stopping by!  Make sure you head on over to The House blog to see what the rest of the Design Team has done with this photo.  And if you "need" any of the stamps I used, check out my 10% off your entire order coupon code over in my lift sidebar.

Supplies:

Stamps: Repeat Impressions "Pelican's Piling", "Postcard" and "Birthday"

Dies: MFT "Blueprints 13" stitched rectangle and "Blueprints 14" stitched circle; Spellbinders "Classic Circles, large"

Stencils: MFT "Diagonal Stripes" and "Ocean Motion"; STAMPlorations "Anchor"

Challenges:

Crafty Calendar--masculine

Crafty Creations #421--anything goes

Crafty Friends #152--sketch (I turned it on end, and then had to flip it a bit again to fix my oops.  Hopefully it is not too much of a stretch.)

STAMPlorations Stencil Challenge--anything goes using a stencil

Use Your Stuff #422--stencils

Creative Moments #214--anything goes

Creative Fingers #208--anything goes

Sweet Stampin'--things with wings

Sweet Stampers #56--animals, critters, or birds

Lil' Patch of Crafty Friends #158--anything goes

Cardz 4 Guyz #271--create your own background