Free as a Bird Cad

         Its October 14^th already - October is flying by too fast – which means cold and snow is coming sooner. Yuck. I want summer year round. Okay maybe a dusting of snow on Dec 24^th and it melts on the 26^th.

        Today I’m posting two cards again because they are so much alike….just changed the sentiment. I just bought this stamp and die set last week from the Marketplace on Facebook. I recognized the set as soon as I saw it because I really liked it when Stampin’ Up came out with it but I was on a ‘don’t buy anything’ kick at the time and didn’t pick it up. Later on I saw it on Aliexpress and still didn’t buy it, which I must admit I regretted. So, this lady posts the stamp and die, refers to it as “Free as a Bird” which is what Stampin’ Up named it and even told me how much it sold for when Stampin’ Up released it. Her site also says she is friends with the one of the top 5 Stampin’ Up dealers in Canada that also lives in this city. So I bought it and picked it up only to discover that it was not a used Stampin’ Up set but a knock-off one from Aliexpress in China. When I politely asked the lady why she did not tell me it was not Stampin’ Up she smiled and said, “I never said it WAS Stampin’ UP”. Okay. I just don’t operate that way and I would have been upfront if I was selling it. She had other knock-off Stampin’ Up stamps and dies for sell too but I will never, ever buy anything from her again.        Fortunately, they stamp just fine and die cut okay – they leave a bit more of a border than I like so I trimmed some of them down. I think it would be quicker to just hand cut them!

        Okay, end of my rant, here’s the cards.

                                

    Once the birds were die cut I quickly coloured them with markers that were scribbled on my Tim Holtz mat and I used a water pen to colour them in. They were just die cut out of regular cardstock so I couldn’t use much water. Of course, as usual, I had no plan on how to finish a card using them. So I started digging through my blue stash and found some of these designer paper pieces that I obviously cut down for another project and never used. They birds looked great with them but I didn’t like the bottom of the designer paper. So, more rummaging through the blue folder and I found this dark blue strip and glued it on top. Perfect…this really grounded the card.

        I die cut the birds and the leave swag hanging down out of some foam; glued them together and then onto the card front. The large pink flower was trimmed away and then it was glued on and a pink sparkly centre bead was glued on. The sentiment was die cut twice out of silver paper; glued together and then glued to the dark blue. Love this die set!

        For the second card I decided to use a silver peel-off for an anniversary card.

                          
         That’s all for a cool and cloudy Wednesday, October 14, 2020.

Cheers

Violet

PS: To save a card to your Pinterest account, simply hover over the image until the ‘Pin It” symbol appears and then click…it sometimes take a few seconds. This will take you to your own Pinterest account to save the card.