Minion For Mike

It was our fabulous friend Mike's birthday yesterday and I made him a Despicable Me Minion card and envelope.  We really love those adorable Minions!  I saw a couple of great Minion card ideas and I have to say a big thank you to Louise and Yvonne for their inspiration.

The card base measures 5 3/4" square and I adhered everything to the So Saffron panel before adhering that over the top of the Basic Black and Smoky Slate mat layers.  I've used a blue Bazzill textured CS to make the overalls and I edged the pieces with Soft Suede ink.  Circle punches were used to make the eyes, goggles and smile.  I used a white gel pen to add a dot to each brown eye circle - thanks to looking at Google images of Minions like the one below!

The Gru logo for the pocket was a tad fiddly but I got there in the end!  I used a small blue square placed like a diamond over a black circle and then I added a smaller black circle and blue and black strips to create the G.  I wanted to make the goggles look as realistic as I could so I punched acetate circles to represent glass.  I adhered the acetate to the white circle with trimmed thin 3D foam pads and used the same pads to pop up the silver frames.  I then popped up the goggles over the black CS strip.  The Minion's goggles have metal fastenings on the side so I added some silver nailheads to represent those.  The final touch for the front was to add tiny black buttons to the overall straps.  

Here's the inside.

While putting the card together I thought about what I could do envelope wise.  I had the idea of making a yellow envelope and adding just one eye as some Minions do have just the one eye and goggle piece.  Once I'd had the idea I just had to go along with it!  I'd used So Saffron CS for the card front but I didn't have a 12" x 12" piece of Saffron CS and an A4 piece isn't large enough to make an envelope for this size card.  So that meant a trip to the local craft shop where I picked up some yellow Bo Bunny Double Dot 12" x 12" paper and I used the non dotty side for the outside of the envelope.  I used larger circles to make the eye and goggle but assembled them exactly the same as I did for the card front.

I had the most enormous fun putting this together, I was grinning from ear to ear practically the whole time!  I really hoped that Mike would get a kick out of this card and I'm delighted to report that he absolutely loved it!  I took the card to my local craft shop to match the colour when I went looking for a yellow 12" x 12" paper for the envelope.  It created quite a stir - everyone loved it and a few people took photos - there were warm fuzzies and smiles all round!  I've got Angela and Janet coming to me for a card making afternoon on Thursday and Janet is insisting that she makes one of these!

Supplies:
Stamps: SU! 'Wacky Wishes' set
CS: SU! So Saffron, Basic Black & Whisper White, SU! Brushed Silver CS, Bazzill  blue textured CS, acetate 
Patterned paper: Bo Bunny 'Mellow Yellow'  Double Dot
Ink: SU! Soft Suede, Tim Holtz Faded Jeans Distress Ink, Signo white gel pen
Tools: various size circle punches and dies, X Cut star punches, Envelope Punch Board, Stamp-a-ma-jig
Embellishments & accessories: silver nailheads, PaperMania tiny black buttons, 1mm 3D foam tape, SU! Dimensionals