Happy Birthday Card Inspired by the Artistic Avenger

Last week was a week filled with birthdays and I had tons of fun making cards.  For this card for my cousin's husband, I was completely inspired by the Artistic Avenger.  I simply loved this card.  I loved the colors and style.  For my version, I wanted to a little more masculine so I went right to the Swagger collection from Fancy Pants.  I really love this paper pad for masculine cards.  The brown background and the candles are all from the Swagger paper.  I used some of the Snap line from Simple Stories for the centers of the flame and the yellow paper from the Park Bench pad from Fancy Pants that was on my desk from the last card for the base of the flame.  The sentiment is from Fiskars and I stamped it with Momento Espresso Truffle on some twill ribbon in my stash.  I just love how this card turned out.  Nice and masculine.

Butterfly Card

There is one thing about Pinterest that really frustrates me:  when people pin things such that I cannot find the original source.  Sometimes this is because the person making the pin doesn't understand how Pinterest works.  The person is reading a blog and sees something she likes.  She pins it not realizing that you have to pin from the specific entry, otherwise Pinterest will simply take me back to the most recent post of the blog.  Then I have to sort through all the entries to find the one that is really for the item that caught my attention.  Sometimes, however, I cannot access the original source because I simply don't have access.  The Stampin' Connection is a good example.  I cannot log in to see the sources, but I can see the pictures on Pinterest.  Sometimes the artist is smart and leaves me a breadcrumb in the form of a watermark that at least lets me know who I can give credit to for the inspiration.  That's the case here.  I loved this butterfly card I saw on Pinterest.  Of course, it was a Stampin' Connection link so I could see where it had been pinned from.  But the watermark is from Carrie Gaskin, the Artistic Avenger.  She stopped blogging in October last year and some of the pictures on her blog simply would not load for me, so I couldn't find if she had posted on her blog about it.  It was really kind of a shame too because from the few pictures I did get to load, I can tell I would have found even more inspiration.

The only paper on here that wasn't from my scraps bin is the green pattern paper peeking in the background.  It's from the 6x6 pad called For the Record 2 by Echo Park and designed by Lori Whitlock.  The butterflies were cut on my Cameo using the Echo Park butterfly design.  I cut out only the base and then inked them with various shades of Distress Ink.  I used a french curve to draw the butterfly path and then poked the holes with my stylus and my Stampin' Up paper piercer template to make sure the path remained reasonably evenly spaced.  I finished it off with Hemptique baker's twine instead of ribbon and some glossy accents down the middle of each butterfly. 

I've left off the sentiment on this one because I'm not quite sure what I want to use it for.  I think it could do well as a birthday card, a sympathy card or even just a thinking of you card.  So for now, I'll leave those possibilities open.