February Stamp of the Month - Balloon Animals

I'm excited to welcome you to the February Stamp of the month blog hop using the Balloon Animals stamp set.  If you have come here from Helen's Blog, you are on the right path! The blog hop is a great big circle, so you can start here and work your way all around.  If you get lost along the way, you’ll find the complete list of participating consultants on Melinda’s Blog.

I hope you'll enjoy the many Close To My Heart Consultants sharing their creations using this month's SOTM and other great CTMH products on their blogs. This is simple to do - just click on the link at the end of the post on each blog to move to the next one! 

I chose to make the balloon animals on my cards pastel colors, mostly matching the papers from the Penelope paper pack, with the addition of a bit of Pixie and Thistle cardstock from the Whimsy cardstock pack. I made birthday cards with those papers, the  Balloon Animals stamp set,  and the Cricut. If you have the Cricut Explore, and the Artfully Sent and Artistry cartridges, you can use my cut files here to make your own cards. If you don't have either of those cartridges and would like to get them, you can use the links here.  All of the cards are 5.5" x 4.25."

I made these cards for my youngest granddaughter to give when she's invited to a birthday party. My daughter said she's to the parties of boys in her class, but so far only made this first one for a young boy.

I backed the Cricut cut mat with Honey striped paper.  Before adhering, I put pencil dots in the corners of the stars and traced the confetti swirls. Then I covered only swirl lines with the Pear striped washi tape that comes in the Limeade set of tape, avoiding the star markings. I erased the light pencil dots that marked the stars and adhered the Honey strip. The entire mat was pop dotted onto one of the Crystal Blue papers in the Penelope pack using Thin 3-D Foam Tape.  The balloon animals were stamped with Crystal Blue, Honey, and Pear inks and cut out. They were pop dotted with regular 3-D Foam Tape.  I added  a few Blue Dot and Green Triangle Enamel and Glitter Duos.
I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:
Little Red Wagon #326 - birthday
Mod Squad Challenge - masculine birthday
The Male Room #27 - babies and little boys

Here are two cards I made for little girl birthdays:

 I stamped the giraffe using Sorbet ink and added sparkles and a Pixie Extra Thick Twine bow to the stars tag.

I embossed the Thistle panel on this card using the Confetti Stars embossing folder, then I lightly sanded the stars only using a sanding block. This is what I love about the CTMH cardstock with the white core. With only light pressure using medium grain the block keeps me from sanding the recessed surface. The elephant was stamped with Pixie ink and the monkey with Thistle. I decided to add a little bling using black glitter paper, black an gold ribbon, and gold sequins.

Thank you for visiting. Now you're ready to go back to the beginning if you didn't start there. Visit Catherine's blog.