Do we ever need a reason to celebrate? Can we celebrate just for the sake of celebrating?

To be honest, I don’t have the answer to either of these questions but the thought did cross my mind as I was creating the card for this blog post.

It’s a pretty simple one. Just some alphabet stamps, a spot of ink and some cardstock.

Here’s the card.

Very bright and cheerful I thought.

This one started on a previous blog post when I was using a geometric patterned paper from Die Cuts With A View.

Remember this?

Gorgeous isn’t it?!

Well, it has been sitting on my desk since I last used it so I thought that I had either better use or it or lose it.

As you are reading a blog post about how I used it, I am sure that you can guess the outcome of that debate, lol!

Anyway, I set about having a rummage to see what would work with this paper.

The first thing that I came across was a set of Gemstone Alphabet Stamps from Inkadinkado I recently “won” on eBay (reason to celebrate in itself!).

The stamps look like this…

I thought about stamping each one on a little strip of card and then mounting these across the front of a card.

I had also recently added a rainbow of little coloured inkpad cubes, from Versacolor, to my collection.

So I selected a few – yup, I went with a rainbow spectrum. Well, for a celebration card it’s got to be bright and colourful, right?

I did actually want a unique colour for each letter, but didn’t have any other really bright colours so kept the selection as it was.

I am getting in the habit of sticking gems on practically everything so I recently invested in a little spinny wheel thing of various colours – cannily there were matching colours for each of the inkpads that I had! Yay!

Right, so that was pretty much all that I selected to go with the paper. Simple stuff.

The first step was to stamp out the letters.I did think about cutting out the panels after I had stamped them however for alignment I decided that it would be easier to cut the panels first. They were 1.5cm x 5cm.

Here they are all stamped out.

Next up I cut out matching layering panels in black cardstock. I gave them a 2mm border.

(Surely a contender for “most boring photo ever” award?)

Having stuck the stamped panels to their backing I then went onto to apply the gems (according to the stamp design which had specific spaces for gems on each letter).

I then deliberated over the background for AGES; it actually went dark outside whilst I was trying out different layouts, Lol!

Thankfully I finally settled on this layout.

I chose this because I liked the way the coloured sections disect the central white area. Ok, don’t get me going with all the arty and designy lingo. Let’s move on…

Next choice was how to arrange the letters. Do they all need to line up like little soldiers or are they going to be jumping about like they are celebrating at a rave?

Well, I think that my brain decided that both would be the most effective method so they are all lined up neatly but staggered like they are doing a mini Mexican wave :)

Like this …

So that was it.

Here are a couple more views of the card.

(You probably noticed that I did go on and add an additional white border to the card – I just felt that it needed it).

I still don’t have an answer for the “Do we need a reason to celebrate” question – whether we do or don’t this card will help brighten my day each time I think about it because I will be imagining those little letters cheering as they do that mini Mexican wave just one more time, lol!

If you want to know any more, or have any thoughts or comments to make on this post, please feel free to use the comments section at the bottom of this page.

Thanks for taking the time to read my little blog. I look forward to creating more posts in the near future.

Take care.

J :)