Hello crafty friends. I’m back today with a birthday card for my father-in-law, who’ll be turning 96 on Friday. He doesn’t get out of the house anymore, so I thought he might appreciate a landscape on his birthday. This one uses the colours from Inspire.Create – I thought they were ideal for a masculine card.

I started with a piece of Stampin’ Up! card in ‘crumb cake’ and trimmed a square to fit a 6×6 card blank. I’ve used the ‘two trees panoramic vista aperture’ die from Claritystamp, and marked the internal edges of the lower half onto the card in pencil. I then masked it off with low tack tape and blended ‘ginger’ Adirondack ink (the nearest I’ve got to SU’s ‘cinnamon cider’) onto it to colour the land.

I then made a 6×6 card blank from ‘early espresso’ cardstock and mounted the ‘crumb cake’ square onto it.

I die cut the landscape in the ‘early espresso’ card, using a nested square die to give it a frame. For once I remembered to put ‘Stick It’ adhesive sheet on the back so the die cut would be sticky & I wouldn’t need glue! I went over the hills fairly roughly with a white Posca pen to give the effect of snow, and once it was dry I attached it to the card front. I added some further shading at the bottom of the trees using the ‘ginger’ ink and a Pergamano blending nib.

I finished by stamping the sentiment onto a ‘crumb cake’ die cut banner, which I trimmed down and attached to the card with foam pads. The final touch was the little bird, from Clarity’s Craft Club stamps in April.

Thanks for dropping in. We’ll be celebrating his birthday on Christmas Eve, which is the traditional start to our family Christmas every year – all I need to do now is buy his cake!