Hot Air Balloons Birthday Shadow Box Card, Choc Chip Ginger Nuts & A Cake

It was our fabulous friend Mike's birthday on Sunday and he and Debs came over for the afternoon and we cooked dinner in the evening.  I made Mike a hot air balloons shadow box card - and I also made a batch of Delia Smith recipe chocolate chip ginger nuts which I gave him in a jar.

I used Real Red CS for the card base, die cut an oval aperture in the front and added a Bashful Blue frame.  I stamped the clouds in Bashful Blue ink onto Whisper White CS, cut the panel to size and glued  it to the back panel.  I then stamped and fussy cut three hot air balloons, popped two up on the back panel and popped one up on the front.  I stamped some birds onto the sky and then die cut some clouds.  I sponged the edges of the clouds with Bashful Blue ink and popped them up.  I stamped and cut out the sentiment banner and popped that up too.

Here's another view of the card.  Shadow box cards have the wow factor but are easy to put together - I like that in a card!  Another plus is that they fold flat to go inside an envelope.  There's a tutorial here on Splitcoast Stampers if you want to try a shadow box card for yourself.  This card fits into a C6 envelope, I started by cutting a piece of A4 CS in half to get an A5 sized piece and then cut that in half to get the 2 pieces needed for the card base.  I scored both ends of both pieces at 1/2" and 1" to form the box shape.  You can make them to fit into square envelopes too, for example for a 6" square envelope, I'd cut two 5 3/4" CS squares and still score the ends at 1/2" and 1".

Here's the back of the card. 

Here's the front of the envelope.

Here's the jar of home made chocolate chip ginger nuts with a tag tied to the jar.  I was happy to finally ink up the 'Deliciously Made for You' stamp!  Mike absolutely loves ginger but I'm not quite as keen.  I made a batch on Saturday to try them out as I hadn't made them before - yum!  Then I whipped up this batch for Mike on Sunday morning and I added a bit more ground ginger to his batch.

The back of the tag.

I was definitely a domestic goddess this weekend - not only did I make the choc chip ginger nut biscuits, I made Mike a cake to celebrate his birthday  - an Austrian Coffee and Walnut cake!  I should have taken a photo when it was whole but I forgot until after we'd tucked in!  I gave Mike some to take home and we have this left.  It is soooooo good, it won't last long!  You can't go wrong with Delia recipes, they're always delicious!  Mike gave it 10 out of 10 and said mine looked better than the photo in Delia's book - high praise indeed!  We sat in the garden, drank Pimm's, enjoyed the sunshine, chatted, laughed and ate - perfect!

Supplies for card:
Stamps: SU! 'Up, Up & Away' & 'Itty Bitty Banners' sets, Hero Arts 'Clouds' background stamp, birds from Hobby Art, fantastic day sentiment from Hero Arts
CS: SU! Real Red, Bashful Blue & Whisper White
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, SU! Real Red, Bashful Blue, Daffodil Delight & Pacific Point
Tools: Oval Nestabilities dies, Memory Box 'Puffy Clouds' die, SU! Simply Scored, sponge dauber
Embellishments & accessories: SU! Dimensionals

Supplies for tag:
Stamps: SU! 'Creatively Yours' set, 'S.W.A.K.' & 'Dot, Dot, Dot' stamps. 'With Love' from SU! Field Flowers set
CS: SU! Early Espresso & Very Vanilla
Ink: SU! Crumb Cake, Early Espresso & Real Red
Tools: SU! 2 3/8" scallop circle & 2 1/2" plain circle punches, Heart to Heart punch
Embellishments & accessories: SU! Dimensionals