Hello friends! Hope that you’ve had a nice weekend as your days are growing closer to Christmas.
Today I have a reminder for you about the “Shades of Blue” challenge over at the {Cupcake Inspirations} Challenge Blog and that you still have a few days left to enter your blue shaded projects! Hope you’ll join us! Although thoughts of winter, Christmas and snowflakes come to mind with these colors, I’ve decided to take the colors in a different direction for this week:

Blues made me think of a masculine birthday which is something that I needed for a birthday card for my dad this last week, so my thoughts turned to him when making this card. He’s been having some medical issues recently and I wanted to send him a happy card along with some real balloons to help try and cheer him up a bit. My heart is heavily with him right now as he deals with many physical issues.
For my card, I first started with a piece of Bristol Smooth watercolor paper and ink blended some blue oxide inks over the panel with Chipped Saphire, Blueprint Sketch and Salty Ocean Oxide Inks. I die cut the large sentiment die and balloon dies from this piece and then attached the sentiment to a die cut vellum shadow behind it.
I stamped some images with the same blue inks I blended with over a white panel along with doing a very light ink blending in the center of it before attaching the die cut sentiment over top. I then attached that panel to a blue die cut panel and again over a white die cut panel and finally attaching it to an A2 sized side folding blue card base. Lastly, I popped up and glued the die cut balloons along with the silver strings also die cut around the sentiment panel keeping in mind the placement of the strings. I added a few blue sequins to finish it off.

In this close-up photo, you can see the details of the background more clearly along with the shimmer over the balloons which I went over with a glitter brush pen.

So I hope that you’ve enjoyed my birthday card today and were inspired to pull out your blue shaded stash and have a play with them! Really look forward to seeing what you come up with for the challenge! Be sure to check out the {Cupcake Inspirations} Blog and see what the Cupcake Sweeties have to inspire you with this week as well!
Thanks so much for joining with me today and I’ll be seeing you soon!
Challenges:
- The Divas That Cut Paper – Dec Anything Goes + die cut machine
- Lil’ Patch of Crafty Friends – #147 Anything Goes
- The Corrosive Challenge – #12 December Anything Goes
- AAA Birthday – #20 Twinkle
- Creative Moments – #204 Anything Goes
- Watercooler Wednesday – WWC301 Occasions
- Cute Card Thursday – Anything Goes