Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today I’m participating in a blog hop with Kylie Bertucci’s Demonstrator Training group…you’ll find links to blogs from all around the world below.  Feel free to hop through the links and see what great project my fellow demonstrators have made…remember, we all love to receive comments!

My dad’s 80th birthday is actually on Saturday, but I sent his card to him nice and early to be sure it would arrive beforehand.  Both AusPost and the USPS were terribly efficient and got it to him well before the end of March, so I know he’s seen it already and I’m not giving anything away with today’s post.

Dad is a huge fan of American folk music, especially traditional folk and labor/civil rights protest songs.  He is involved with a number of singing groups and festivals, and attends as many concerts as he can.  So I was pleased to use this image from Artfully Aware* to create a group of singers.

I first stamped the Sheet Music background stamp on a piece of Whisper White in Sahara Sand.  Then I stamped the people image twice across the panel, and twice on Post-It notes.  After cutting out the images on the Post-Its I masked both stamped images on the Whisper White layer and stamped one more time above, overlapping onto the masked images.  When I removed the masks it appears that the top image is in front of the bottom.

It’s important when you’re cutting out your mask to cut just inside the outline of your image…the slight bump of the edge of the mask will cause a small blank area in your stamping, and you want your image to come up to the masked image.

I coloured the singers with my Stampin’ Blends and cut them out with a Layering Ovals Framelit.  I also added some Multipurpose Adhesive Sheets to the back of the rest of the same piece of Whisper White (which was stamped with the Sheet Music stamp) and cut out the sentiment with the Well Written Framelits. 

The Crackle Paint background stamp is one of my favourites to add dimension!  The Whisper White mat ties everything together, and the Mossy Meadow card base coordinates perfectly, of course.

*A couple of notes about the Artfully Aware stamp set:  this particular image was sketched from a photo of SU! employees…including Sara Douglass (CEO-2nd from left on top row).  SU! demonstrators who reach the 1 Million sales mark get to work with a concept artist to design a stamp set that has particular meaning for them, and this is Janet Wakeland’s set.  Click on this link to see what inspired Janet’s design.

​I hope you’ll take some time and visit the rest of the blogs participating in today’s hop! (note:  if you’re reading between 5 and 7 am Tuesday morning you may find the links aren’t active yet…go get a cuppa and come back after 7, LOL!)

I’m in Auckland, New Zealand this week!  The first few days I’ll be sightseeing with my husband, then later on I’ll be attending Stampin’ Up!’s OnStage Live convention.   I’ll be posting my sightseeing highlights on my personal Facebook page, and updates from OnStage Live on my Nancy’s Nifty Notes Facebook page…hope you’ll follow along!