World Map for Paper Players #168

Hi Everyone.  Happy Saturday.  I hope you have all had a good week.

I managed to spend a little time in my stamping space today and created two cards.  It took me for ever to get back into the swing of things.  I think my mojo has gone south for winter!  

The fabulous LeAnne is our Paper Player hostess this week and she has a great challenge for us.

Firstly though, a shout out to Nance who designs our challenge badges – and this one is a corker! 🙂

Let's see….. a clean and simple, masculine birthday card!  I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, so I opened the door to my stamping cupboard and stared at my stamps.  Voila.  I had it!  World Map would see a little ink love and would form the basis of my card.   I decided to go with a tag and use that as the focal point.  

Here's my clean and simple, masculine birthday card.

I inked up World Map with Smoky Slate ink and placed my Naturals Ivory tag over the top of the stamp, pressing very lightly.  I wanted the image, but wanted it a little more muted.  I then took Night of Navy and stamped the two sentiments "happy" and wishes" onto the tag, leaving enough room for me to place my Night of Navy birthday die-cut.  I used my glue pen to glue the letters that would fit onto the tag, and cut two little pieces from Stampin' Dimensionals to put under the b and y. That way I knew that my die-cut would stay in place.  

Once my tag was assembled, I used Dimensionals to pop it off the Very Vanilla base.  I didn't want to use ribbon, as Lou insists that I cannot use ribbon on a masculine card!  So, I went to my old masculine card standby – The Open Sea and stamped the compass element onto a piece of Very Vanilla card stock and punched it out.  I mounted it on a piece of crumb cake to make it stand out a little from the base.  All that was left, was to dig around in my stash for the hand and brad.  

When I looked it at, it needed a frame.   But…. a Night of Navy frame was just to heavy, so I took a leaf out of Kristina Werner's book and used my Night of Navy marker to create a hatched line all the way around the card.  It helps to frame the card without drawing away from the focal point.  I've seen Kristina use this technique often during the onlinecardclasses and I really like it!

Don't forget to check out the fabulous design team cards.  You can check out their blogs and their cards at the following links:

• Ann
• Anne Marie
• LeAnne
• Nance
• Sandy

Then, pop along to the Paper Players and play along with us this week.

On a personal note:

It's been a long week at the office and I was really pleased that today was the weekend.  I didn't set my alarm this morning and only woke up long after the sun had risen!  Considering I'm up at 6 most mornings, this was a very unusual occurrence.  The cats seemed to be quite content and I woke up with all of them on the bed – even Bailey.  Now, that was unusual.

We had a wind from the North today – also unusual, and I realized that the straggler red-shouldered blackbirds had left.  There were here one minute – incredibly noisy – then next, it was quiet and they were gone.

I also noticed, that the wind had brought returning birds!   The juncos are back!  We know that fall is well under way when the Juncos appear.  I'm really hoping they stay around this year.  We couldn't keep them last year.  There was just nowhere warm for them to roost.  However, with the cedars we planted at the beginning of summer, the birds have found a nice little cluster of evergreens to keep them warm and toasty.  Hopefully, this will be enough to keep the juncos with us.

The weather is still grey and wet!  In fact, they have even threatened us with snowflakes this weekend!   The wetland is looking decidedly brown and the leaves have lost their colors.  The colors were nowhere near as spectacular as last year – and much later, too.  The winds of the last week have blown the leaves off most of the trees and you can really feel the chill in the air.

Whilst I was outside photographing my card, I took a couple of photos at the feeder.  I loved this one!

The nuthatch hanging upside down, always makes me smile.  The woodpeckers bookending the feeder was perfect!

I did manage to capture a photo with a couple of juncos and whitethroated sparrows.  All of them love that the feeder is so close to the cedars!

As always, thank you for your visits and your comments!  Warm hugs and prayers for those of you who need a little lift tonight. 

I'll be back tomorrow with another card.

Hugs

Jaydee

Card recipe – all ingredients Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted:

• Card stock:  Naturals Ivory, Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla
• Stamps:  World Map, The Open Sea.  Sentiment Wonderful Words: birthday (PTI)
• Inks:  Smoky Slate.  Night of Navy