More Birthday Cards

..still catching up on this year's crafty activities....

I think I've confessed here before - but I'll say again -  I am so rubbish at birthdays that most years I fail to get out one real card and don't even always manage e-cards. This year I've been determined to do better.  I've been hampered by the fact that I don't actually know when everyone's birthday is (more shame) but I've done a few.  (I have to admit I also missed a few - but I'm hoping to improve on that next year!)

It's an odd coincidence that my older brothers and sister all married partners who were born in the same month - within about 7 days - as theirs and that's helped enormously with the summer birthdays.  Particularly as I decided that 'combo' cards were ok.

So in June I made this card for my brother Al and his with Kathy.  I started with a photo of them take a couple of years ago on the beach at a family reunion.  The original photo is lovely (gorgeous rocks and water in the background), but I wanted to make a more cartoon-y card so I used Craft Artist to cut them out and place them in front of a green patterned paper.  

The rest of the card is pretty straightforward, some Spellbinders for cutting the photo, Cuttlebug to emboss the background and birthday hats cut and glittered by hand.

The pennants were made using Anna Griffin stamps, stamped onto patterned paper, cut and strung together.

I so liked the result that I used the same approach for my sister Kim and her husband's Jeff card.  In fact the photo I used was taken on the same day as Al and Kathy's.

The background was a number of pieces of Core-dinations card (left over from Gen's mini book!) that I pasted onto a piece of paper before embossing and sanding the lot.  Birthday hats were cut using the Cricut this time (Celebrations).

The recipients liked them  - and didn't seem to mind too much that I'd bundled the greetings!