We’re past sixteen candles here and onto seventeen. My oldest son, James turned 17 yesterday. Where HAS the time gone?! I remember it so clearly it seems like yesterday. As for me…I don’t FEEL seventeen years older since then! But wow…he certainly has grown-up. We celebrated James birthday yesterday, as always, amid the busy holiday preparations and the elementary school Christmas Concert. As an aside to that…whatever happened to singing traditional Christmas songs at the Christmas Concert?! It just isn’t the same anymore. So anyway…amidst my busy day yesterday, I whipped up this little card and wrapping for him for one of his gifts. 🙂
Celebrate Seventeen
For this design, I actually got the idea from some striped paper I have. I had this little book to wrap up for him and for some strange reason, it popped into my head that I could use some of my older thin patterned paper to wrap it up. So fun! I trimmed off 2 inches from the length and width to make it 10×10 size so that I could work the trimmings into a coordinating card design. 🙂 More about the wrapping later. 🙂 I pulled the color combo from the striped paper. I believe it may have been from a Rob and Bob Studio Slab pack from Michael’s a few seasons ago. I pulled out my Prism cardstock swatch book and matched up my cardstock. I love Olive and aqua colors together and the change for that red and blue boy card is so welcome!
To create my design, I decided to use panels of color on a dark brown cardstock base. The design actually works three Cornish Heritage Farms backgrounders into it. I’m having so much fun with them and the texture and interest they provide. Instant patterned paper in exactly the colors you want. For the top panel, I stamped the Grid Paper stamp in Old Olive ink and then inked the edges with it. My bottom panel is overstamped with the Burlap backgrounder. Hard to see in the pic but the texture looks fabulous in person. I stamped the word celebrate from Kim’s Scripty Words set in my Black Palette Hybrid ink. The tails are quite long and didn’t fit into my space so I just inked up the very middle of the stamp to make it work.
Next I was on to working on the circular part of the design. The circle was punched with my Marvy Mega circle punch and the edges sponged with more Old Olive. For the present, I decided to use this little clear present sticker from Heidi Swapp designs. It is from the Silhouette Images – Bridal White sticker sheet. It was fun taking the presents off a Wedding themed product and using it on a birthday design instead. I added this fun Making Memories Mesh Star Brad, set with my Crop-a-dile.
The design still needed something! I then remember these fun Clear Scraps Stars I had picked up a few weeks ago. I think I’ll be heading back for more! So cool! I stamped Lined Paper on my star with Black Stazon and inked up the edges to get a more urban look. To tie in the black and personalize it a bit more, I added “seventeen” with my Dymo Label Maker on the grid paper. I’m quite pleased with the look now!
As for the wrapping, I had never seen a present wrapped on the diagonal until last week. One of the toy shops here offered free Christmas wrapping and I took them up on it. The lady wrapped one of the gifts on the diagonal and it was kind of neat. I just had to try it here. I need to work on those corners a little but I don’t think anyone will care…especially not a 17yo! I tied up the package with some of my May Arts ribbon and tied on a little buckle from the We R Memory Keepers hardware set….just to make it a little special. 🙂
Hoping your day is special! Have a good one!
