Birdhouse Warm Wishes Card

We always feed the birds in our garden and we have regular visitors including lots of blue tits.  It never fails to cheer me up when I see them!  I recently bought this Birdhouse stamp set, I love the collage-y look and the little blue tits are so sweet and it will be ideal to get me practising my watercolouring!  As my craft group ladies told me at the last meeting it's about time for a masculine card I'm planning on using this set at next month's card group get together.  As this set is new to me I thought I'd better have a trial run with a card design and I needed a card for our friend Alan so that was perfect!

I stamped the Hardwood stamp in Gathered Twigs Distress Ink on Crumb Cake CS, inked the edges and glued the panel to the left side of a 5 1/4" square white card base.  I stamped the image twice onto watercolour paper so that I could cut out a second birdhouse and pop it up.  I used inks and a waterbrush to colour the image.  I coloured the central script area with Crumb Cake, used Old Olive for the leaves, Gathered Twigs and Soft Suede for the birdhouse and So Saffron for the frame.  Hmmm, it looked a tad wishy washy and needed more punch so I added Crushed Curry ink to the frame and painted the birdhouse trim with Marina Mist ink - much better!  I fussy cut the image, layered onto a black CS mat, glued the mat to the card front, stamped the sentiment and popped up the birdhouse.

Here's the inside and the envelope.  I fussy cut the little blue tit and positioned him so it looks like he's perched on the wooden strip.  The stamps in the set are clear so it was easy to stamp the bird onto the leafy stem.  After I'd coloured the image I cut it out with a circle punch and matted onto a larger punched black CS circle to finish.

Supplies:
Stamps: SU! 'Hardwood' background stamp, Imagination Crafts 'Birdhouse' clear Decoupage Stamp Set, Crafty Impressions 'Medium Everyday Messages'  clear set
CS: PaperMania square white card blank, SU! Crumb Cake, & Basic Black, watercolour paper
Ink: VersaFine Onyx Black, SU! Crumb Cake, So Saffron, Crushed Curry, Old Olive, Marina Mist, Soft Suede & Smoky Slate, Basic Black marker, Tim Holtz Gathered Twigs Distress Ink
Tools: circle punches, waterbrush, sponge dauber
Embellishments & accessories: SU! Dimensionals