Happy Birthday

I've been on a kick lately to try to use up lots of scraps and supplies.  I have a lot in my stash that I just *had* to have, but that never see the light of day!  I'm also trying to save money for an upcoming trip - so it seems to me that an attempt to use up what I have without going crazy buying new stuff will be both fun and frugal!

Right.

So - first up is a card I made featuring the b-e-a-utiful swallows die from A|Muse Studio.  I felt like I had a ton of ideas for this one when I first saw it, but it didn't take long for me to toss it in the die box and forget all about it.

What a cute shape!  The set from AMS comes with both the big and small (or mommy and baby) birds, and just picture this thing cut out of glitter or shimmer paper!  I also really like popping shapes like this off the paper just a tiny bit to give the card some dimension.

The card itself was pretty simple.  I heat embossed the AMS Harlequin Background stamp in black (I, personally, love the distressed/imperfect look, so you can see in the closeup how the little speckles and blank spots came through).  I used my Big Shot to cut out the swallows from gloss black paper (can't tell from the picture, but it matches the embossed background well!), and the label shape from the Vintage Labels 1 die set.  I did some fussy cutting around the label with the pink paper, and stamped the verse Happy Birthday (from AMS Essential Sentiments set) by individually inking both words so they'd fit on the label with the birds.  Then it was just a matter of gluing it together and tying on some ribbon (AMS satin in Bubblegum, I think).  It didn't feel finished so I punched a bottom border with a Fiskars punch and put an offsetting strip of pink at the top.

Hope you enjoyed!