Balloon Bouquet

For my Visible Image Design Team post this week, I’m sharing the card I made for my very dear friend who was awarded a British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours list this year.  As well as being a talented crafter, she also founded Project 71, a support group for WW2 veterans and the award is in recognition of this.  Lorie has worked tirelessly raising funds, organising events and marshalling her band of volunteers and the award is very well deserved.  I’m very proud of her. She was presented with her medal a few weeks ago and had a little shin-dig to celebrate with the volunteers and show off the medal.

Lorie likes autumn colours and also knitting so I decided to use these as my inspiration.  I stamped the Birthday Balloons in orange and yellow tones of Distress Inks, spraying the ink on the stamp with a little water before stamping.

The balloons were cut out with the matching dies and then some were decorated with the star and dots stamp in the set and other with the Knitted background stamp.  The decoration was white heat embossed.  (If you don't have these dies, get them quick as they're low stock and are going to be discontinued!)

Next, I arranged the balloons into threes and glued them together.  The back row of balloons was to be glued onto the panel and the front rows elevated using foam tape.  To add more dimension to the balloon bouquet, I stamped additional balloons directly onto the background panel.

On the back of the bottom row of balloons, I stuck some foam tape and adhered some metallic twine for the balloon strings.

I added a line of double-sided tape to secure the other end of the strings.

The sentiment is from Best Birthday Ever and was stamped in black and clear heat-embossed.  After cutting it out, I back it and the background panel with black card.  For some extra decoration, I finished with some enamel shapes that matched the colour scheme.