Go Bananas!

I just finished this card and couldn't wait to write the post.  I'm really happy with how it turned out!  I only made one card this week because it's a special birthday card for my brother.  When I began, I had a color scheme of red, baby blue, ivory and kraft or brown in mind.  As you can see, that's not what I ended up with!  No blue to be found and yellow instead of ivory.  I love this little monkey just hanging out and Brian does live in a tropical climate, he is a little bananas at times and one of his favorite colors is yellow.  Overall, the card came together pretty quickly.  The mat stacks and frame stamps from Papertrey are so easy to use and really add to the card.  Another plus with this card is I was finally able to use one of the new patterned paper pads I received for Christmas to add the leafy background.    

There are times when the inside of a card is more of a struggle than the outside and this card was one of those.  I also think it has something to do with the kraft cardstock base.  You open the card and all you see is a dull brown space.  Blah.  I think my interior solution is genius if I do say so myself!  (Just a little pat on the back!)  I cut another mat stack frame and stamped Happy Birthday.  All my sentiment stamps are pretty small and this one was swallowed by the frame.  I started looking through my basket of stamp sets and found Faux Ribbon.  It's the first set I ever purchased from Papertrey because it has sentiments that cover just about every occasion you can think of.  But....it also has long strips of stamps that look like ribbon strips when using colored ink.  I wasn't sure how this would look, but decided to give it a try.  I used the bubble ribbon and colored in the bubbles using coordinating colors from the front of the card.  Beautiful, festive and not girly!  Success!  Now, just have to get it mailed this week so it'll arrive by his birthday.  I tend to forget how long it takes mail to reach Hawaii!

Now for a progress update.  Last weekend, I did end up creating 3 cards after I posted on the blog and with today's card that brings the February card total to 12!  4 Christmas, 4 Valentine, 3 Daffodil and 1 Birthday.  Woot Woot!  AND including the two-page layout I finished yesterday using postcards from a trip to Hawaii in 1996, I finished 4 two-page layouts for the month covering The Last Day, Eckert's Orchard, Thanksgiving and Hawaii 1996.  I'm going to sort through my photos while catching up on The Closer tonight in an attempt to make layouts even easier.  Maybe then I'll be able to do more than one a week.  No promises, but it's worth a shot!