Love Birds

I created a couple of anniversary cards recently using the Bird Builder Punch. The leaves of the branch were used to create a love heart wreath on which the two birds sat.

The body of each bird was stamped prior to being punched. I used the note tag shaped stamp from the Cheerful Tags set in Island Indigo ink on Island Indigo cardstock just to give the bird some detail. The other bird was stamped in Blackberry Bliss on Strawberry Slush cardstock using the bird from the Punch Potpourri stamp set. The wings weren’t stamped but I sponged the edges just to give them some texture. And the gold foil in the middle of the wings? These are some of the cut outs of the gold foil “happy” from the birthday cards I made using the Hello You thinlits. They were too good to throw away at the time so I added them to my “I might use these one day pile” and found they fit perfectly in the wings!

The eyes of the birds have a little bit of gold on them. They’re pearls which I covered with VersaMark ink and gold embossing powder. I tried one as an experiment to see if it would work and it seems to be ok. I was worried the gold would rub off (or the pearl would melt!) but so far so good. The little love heart between the birds is from the Pictogram Punches stamp set, and punched with the coordinating heart punch. Again this is embossed with gold and stuck on with a dimensional to help it stand out. In keeping with the gold theme, and the bird theme, I stamped two images on the inside of the card and embossed them with gold (I just love this stuff!). The Happy Anniversary comes from the Teeny Tiny Sentiments stamp set and the birds are from For the Birds.

It was quite quick to get all the pieces together for the card – that’s the great thing about stamp sets with coordinating punches. And the stamps on the inside were aligned with the help of my Stamp-a-ma-jig. However, the card took a long time to assemble because gluing the heart wreath together was so fiddly. I used Tombow so the leaves would stick well to the card base. It was just one of those afternoons with sticky fingers, gluing the wrong side of the leaves, dropping the glued leaves in the wrong place etc… but I got there in the end and I hope the love birds all like their card.