This Rooted in Nature Masculine Birthday Card was fun and interesting to make and you could use it for other occasions as well. I hadn’t used this stamp set and designer paper yet (amazingly!) so I looked in the Stampin’ Up! Annual Catalog for inspiration. This card is my take on one of the samples in the catalog! Can you tell which one?
I wasn’t planning to make it a birthday card and I planned to use one of the greetings in the Rooted in Nature Stamp Set. And this is why you should always check everything in your Stampin’ Up! order when you get it! I’ve never had this happen before, and honestly, rarely have any problems with my orders. Rooted in Nature is a two-pack stamp set with so many stamps. I had only used the tree from the first pack. Then I opened the second case for the greeting I wanted to use. That sheet of rubber was the same as the stamps in the first case!! The labels for the stamps were correct and the cover on the case was correct….just the stamps weren’t! Of course I called Stampin’ Up! and of course, they are sending me a correct set!! So I had to choose a greeting from another set! And I remembered I needed a birthday card for my nephew!
The card base is Cajun Craze and then there is a layer of the Nature’s Poem Designer Series Paper. Too bad it doesn’t show up more! I should have made the top layer a little smaller! I chose Shimmery White Cardstock for the stamping because I knew I would be doing some watercoloring in the background and Shimmery White holds up to the water. Regular Whisper White Cardstock is likely to pill or get rough from the water.
I stamped the tree with Mossy Meadow Ink, trying not to get the tree trunk inked up and then used a Soft Suede Marker to color directly on the rubber for the tree trunk. Sometimes I stamped directly but usually I stamped off once or even twice. Then I stamped one tree and die cut with the Nature’s Roots Framelits Dies. It is adhered with Stampin’ Dimensionals to pop it up.
Before adhering the tree, I watercolored the background with some Balmy Blue Ink and Soft Suede for the ground. I used my Aqua Painter and just tiny bits of ink in the lids of the ink pads. So fun!
For the greeting, I chose a birthday greeting in the Beautiful Bouquet Stamp Set because it was the right size for the space. It is die cut with a Layering Oval Die and layered on a piece of Tranquil Tide cardstock die cut with a scalloped oval die in the same set. For a little extra, I cut a small piece of the 5/8″ Burlap Ribbon to go under the greeting.
This card shows that even though what you thought you had planned to make, various factors, including maybe your creativity, may change that! In this case, partly my own idea of stamping more trees than the sample in the catalog and then not having the greeting I thought I was going to use changed the original idea of the card! But now I have a birthday card for my nephew that I might not have had otherwise! (Also a good idea to check your birthday book of dates before the middle of the month to see what birthdays are coming up!)
Remember, Bonus Days are going on, so if you were interested in the Rooted in Nature Bundle of stamps and dies, you would save 10% with the Bundle and also get a $5 coupon code to use with Stampin’ Up! in September (when the Holiday Catalog goes live!) This has been a very popular Bundle, I’m just slow in getting around to using it! You can make many cards like this Rooted in Nature Masculine Birthday Card.