Because I own a shop that makes paper goods, I found that a lot of my crafting involves shop production and very little of it was for personal reasons.  I felt much too unbalanced with this approach the last couple of years, and in keeping with my OLW, complete, I didn't want to continue being this way.  So today, I decided to craft for myself!

My sister-in-law's birthday is coming up next week so she was the ideal choice.  Of course, I already missed one sister-in-law's birthday so I couldn't miss the other one right?  This card was a lot of fun to make.  It looks very simple, but it took a surprising amount of time to figure out since it involved some techniques I wasn't familiar with.

First technique was heat embossing on velum.  I've seen it done so many times, like the card I found here, but I never worked up the guts to actually do it.  I kept imagining the heat would just melt the velum?  But being better at what you do is all about trying new things.  

I die-cut the large feather from gold velum that I picked up at Hobby Lobby.  Then I rubbed my embossing buddy all over it to help prevent static cling.  I think I was a little skimpy on some of the edges.  Stamping the feather image with versamark, I sprinkled white detail embossing powder all over and heat set it with the heat gun.  It was so easy!  I did notice that it took a little longer for the embossing powder to set than it does on regular cardstock.

Second technique was doing a geometric style.  I love the look, but I never could make it work.  After am embarassing amount of time, I finally landed upon a configuration that was pleasing to the eye.  Mostly used this card as an inspiration on the layout.  Having the right sized piece was helped by using the Tipped Tops dies.  It made it really easy to play around with layers that already fit perfectly on an A2 card.

I stamped the aqua mist panel with Background Basics: Retro using versamark ink for a subtle look.  I stamped the sentiment in smokey gray using a combination of Happiness in Bloom and Everyday Happiness.  The white panel was textured with the Woodgrain Impression plate which is a little hard to see, but looks amazing in real life.  Final touch was adding three tiny pearls above the aqua panel.

 

The inside was one of my favorite little things on this card.  I used Happiness in Bloom for the main sentiment, but I thought it was missing "something".  That tiny feather from Fanciful Feathers was the perfect thing!  It ties it to the front and makes it look too cute.  

Hope my sister-in-law likes it!