Our Daily Bread Designs - Birthday Dogwood

The buds on my fruit and flowering trees are getting fat and my daffodils are in full bloom. Spring seems like it's already here! In Missouri, our state tree is the flowering dogwood. Where I live, I don't see wild ones, but my favorites in yards that I pass are the pink dogwood. Our Daily Bread Designs Shining the Light Challenge #99 is to use stamped flowers on your card. They have a beautiful dogwood flower stamp in their set called Grow in Grace. I combined that flower image with two birthday sentiments from the set called Birthday Blessings to make this card. I used the deconstructed sketch #42 for the design.

I colored the floral image with copics after stamping with Memento Tuxedo Black ink. The birthday sentiment was actually written in one line, but I used Scotch tape to cover one word at a time to get it to fit in a circle. You put tape over a word before inking, pull off the tape, then stamp, then clean the stamp so that the first word doesn't show up when you stamp the second word. I love that trick! I also love mixint stamps from different sets. Using the beautiful dogwood image on a birthday card for Virginia ODell next week was perfect for a lady turning 87 years young. Here's what the inside birthday sentiment said:



Using the uncolored image and Proverb together still gives me plenty of room to write my own addition to the greeting. I'm linking this card to Birthday Sundaes for challenge #46 this week - to show a birthday sentiment.

6.5" x 5" Birthday Card Recipe:
Paper - Basic Grey "Curio;" My Mind's Eye Stella & Rose "Mabel" (tiny floral and solid brown strip)
Stamps - Our Daily Bread Designs "Grow in Grace"(dogwood), "Birthday Blessings"
Ink - Memento Tuxedo Black, Ranger Vintage Photo, Close To My Heart Brown Bag, Honey
Other - Cuttlebug "Kassie's Brocade" embossing folder; Spellbinder's Lacey Circle and Scalloped Circle Nestabilities; circle punches; CTMH blush ribbon; lace unknown

Fashionable Stamping for a Child

Birthday Sundaes Challenge #45 said to "Get Messy" with inks, sprays, or paints. This challenge combined well with Fashionable Stamping Challenge #16 - for a child. Since I have five grandsons, I seem to regularly need a "boy" card, so the "messy look" is great. I wanted to use a stamp set that had a boy and a tree, so the sketch from CPS #254 had the right dimensions for the tall tree. I made the card 7" x 5."

I used some Basic Grey paper from "Color Me Silly" that already looked painted and I tried a fun technique to make the red and white polka dot paper and the white cardstock look like it matched.  First I wrapped a piece of something used to caulk walls before painting around my rubber brayer. I don't know the name, but it's slightly sticky and has a nice texture. I inked it using Shabby Shutters the first time and Broken China the second time. By rolling it back and forth a couple of times across the red strip, if you don't lift it, the lines stay in the same place. For more lines I reinked and rolled again.

When I rolled it across the white, I had to make sure that the exposed brayer that wasn't covered with texture was outside the boundary each time or I would have gotten a thick dark streak instead of texture in that spot. Here's a closeup of the red spotted paper and the white mat before I added the sentiment.

I used 4 different stamps from this Childhood Portrait set to create the scene. In addition, the red vertical panel was embossed on the cuttlebug. I put two layers of pop dots under the left side of the sentiment.

7" x 5" card recipe:
Paper - Basic Grey "Color Me Silly" and "June Bug;" CTMH White Daisy CS; Black CS
Stamps - CTMH "Childhood Portrait," "Card Chatter-Birthday"
Inks - Ranger Shabby Shutters, Broken China; Memento Tuxedo Black
Other - Cuttlebug Flower Dots(?) embossing folder, brayer, pop dots