BIRTHDAY WISHES IN CORAL, LIGHT GRAY, AND GOLD

This is the third card in my month-long participation as Guest Designer at Just Us Girls Challenge blog. This week is a challenge to create a card with 3 colors - coral, light gray, and gold. The gray background is lighter than it looks in the photos. These are not three colors that I would necessarily put together, but I think they came out fairly well and I'm mailing this off to one of my best friends for her 77th birthday.

 

To give the card a bit more dimension I selected watercolor paper, and using a Sizzix deckle-edge rectangular die, I doubled up on the mat. I gold heat-embossed splatters from one of Tim Holtz's Halloween stamps onto pale gray cardstock and die cut it with a smaller deckle-edge rectangle. I die cut Alexandra Renke leaf and blossom stems from a couple of printed cardstock scraps and a darker gray solid. I stamped and heat-embossed a sentiment by using a PTI "Embellished Elegance" Birthday, adding "wishes" that I cut from a Christmas stamp set (I'm in the habit of cutting up my stamps when I need a single word. It works fine as long as I don't lose the pieces!). The final steps before mounting the rectangle to the face of a folded card was to punch a hole in the corner and wrap gold twine through and add a small coral heart to balance the colors. The coral dotted envelope liner was some paper that I had created a couple of years ago by printing onto 10 lb. ink jet paper with my copier. 

Do join me in this challenge - and look in at the Design Team members to see their beautiful cards.

"Just Us Girls" Challenge: Just Us Girls Challenge #641 - Color Week

I'm also adding this card to the Tic Tac Toe Challenge #170, using the left down column - CAS/Birthday/Die Cut(s).

TTTC170 - Featured Designer Vicky - Tic Tac Toe Challenge

Added July 16, 2022:

Added July 24, 2022:

Update on the continuing cat dramas: I know I already mentioned that we had a very hungry female cat show up in our back patio a couple of months ago. We fed her for several days and she brought her litter of 5 kittens in appreciation. She is very friendly, and we think she was a stray, but her babies were completely feral. We've been feeding them, but still unable to handle them, so we can't send them to the shelter or re-home them until they can be handled. They're about 3 months old now (we think they were about 6 weeks when the mama brought them to us). They're getting a bit friendlier, and I sit with them for their evening meal of soft food, which they love. They now come running when I show up with their food and they will play at our feet when we're sitting on the patio. It's a slow process but I'm seeing improvement in their trust. 

We named the mama Chloe after a wine that we enjoy drinking in our patio during the evenings. Once she weaned her litter, we took her to be spayed and get all of her shots and she was already pregnant with 6 little embryos that the vet said looked to be about 1-2 weeks old. She's now living permanently inside with our other 2 adult cats. Being a stray made her very food conscious and she eats every meal like it's her last one! She's gained almost 3 pounds since we took her in. 

I'll leave you with photos of one of the females - we've named her Cleocatra because of her heavy eye makeup!

Is she not the most beautiful little cat you've seen? Here she is again with her brother Tiger making themselves quite at home on the couch in our patio. 

Added July 31st: Cleo went to a loving home this morning where she'll be companion to 3 other cats - 2 adult cats and 1 year-old female. Now to work on socializing her remaining 4 siblings. They were pretty skitsey this morning and may not forgive me for a while for taking away their sweet playmate! 

 

These kitties were obviously fathered by a big brute Himalayan who wanders the neighborhood. In addition to these two, there's one more male (long-haired and looks just like his father) and a female that looks similar to Tiger. Then there's a little male tuxedo scamp who clearly has a different father.