Button Balloons

Hi Everyone.  Happy Friday night.

It rained today and I swear the grass went from brown to partly green in a couple of hours.  It was wonderful to feel and smell the refreshed air.  The shoots are coming up on many of our plants and our bulbs are starting to make their appearance known.  Spring is just the most magical time of the year.

Which reminds me… magical is what I was playing with tonight.   Here's a sneak preview for you.  I received some of the new goodies I ordered today.  They arrived at around 9am and I didn't get to open the box until 6pm.   You have no idea how hard that was for me!  I'm loving the new Smooch Spritz from the mini and the set that you can see the preview of is called a Little Bit of Magic.  I don't know about you, but I spent a lot of time playing fairies as a girl.  Mostly borrowing my best friend Pam's ballet tutu.  So, I bought this set to make a birthday card for Pam – her birthday is this month.  I also think it's perfect for little girls and scrapbook pages.  Hopefully I will get this card finished tomorrow… but I have to do taxes first!!!!

Tonight's card is based on a card I saw in a stamping magazine.  It was bright and cheerful and had button balloons.  I decided that I absolutely had to create one.  Especially as we have a colleague who let us know that he and his wife are expecting.  Lou and I thought this card was perfect to congratulate parents to be when we didn't know the gender of the baby.  PLUS… it kept me going with my resolution to use colors, stamps, embellishments, etc that I don't normally use.  Well, I can say, with all honesty, that I have never combined these colors before.  Nor have I used buttons for balloons.

Card recipe:

Card stock:    Gable Green, Bashful Blue, Whisper White.

Embellishments: Playground buttons – Sherbet (116312), Grosgrain ribbon, dimensionals, Silver elastic cord, corner rounder

Inks: Basic Grey (balloon strings), Chocolate Chip – sentiment

What would I change about this card:  the ribbon – the ties are too long and need to be shorter! and… the sentiment is a little thicker on the bottom…. grrrrr

Card size:  A2.  Blue layer: 4 3/8" by 3 1/8.  White layer: 3 1/8" by 2 5/8"

I drew three strings using my Basic Grey marker.  I ran silver elastic cord through the button holes.  Button colors are Certainly Celery, Pumpkin Pie and Bashful Blue.

I rounded the corner of the Whisper White and adhered it to the Bashful Blue.  I also rounded the corners of the Bashful Blue.  I then stamped the sentiment and tied the ribbon around the blue and the white to hide the bottom of the white edge. 

I adhered the buttons using 3 carefully placed mini glue dots on each button.

I adhered the focal image to the Green Galore base using dimensionals.  I then finished up the card by rounding the corners of the card base.

I think its such a happy card and I loved working with these colors.  It's fabulous to work with these soft spring colors after the rich colors of autumn(fall) and winter.

Once I have my magic card finished, I will have some tips on using the Smooch Spritz!  I have a few great sets to show you over the next couple of weeks.  However, I still have cards I made this weekend to show you, too.  I'm hoping I can get taxes over tomorrow and Sunday morning and then do a little stamping… hopefully.  I've only made one card since Sunday and it's driving me crazy.    I found myself on a conference call yesterday designing a card in my head.  Well that was all well and good until someone unexpectedly asked me a question.  errr… mmmm….. well 🙂

As I type the end of this post, the sun is setting behind the hill – what gorgeous colors Mother Nature gives us.  Lilacs and pinks and greys and indigo – what an absolutely glorious sunset.  It's nights like this when I wished we didn't live in a valley.

Happy Easter everyone.  I hope you have a great weekend and get to spend some good quality time with the family and for those readers who are not in the USA – have a great long weekend!

Hugs

Jaydee