It’s time to make another batch of birthday cards for the card ministry at our church. I’ve made 37 of this card that you see here, and I confess that I’m a little nervous. For the card ministry I’ve always tried to design somewhat “generic” cards with a nice design and a birthday sentiment. These cards go to adults in our church and I’ve been nervous to try something cute out of fear of possibly offending someone. But this month I decided to go for it, and we’ll see what the feedback is. I’ve been itching to create with the cute stamps in the Hippo Happiness set. I purchased the bundle mainly to get the dies because there are some fantastic layering shapes, but the cuteness of the animals have called me to create. I hope that the recipients enjoy the whimsy of the card and the punny sentiment!

I was inspired in my design by this layout from the Freshly Made Sketches challenge. I used the middle-sized diecut layer for the dark strip on the panel, and this has all of the stamping. I will confess that it did take a bit of fiddling to get the layers lined up just-so on the hippo, and thank goodness for the Stamparatus! Once I did have the images lined up right, I knew that I could replicate the images over and over and it would be right every time. Huzzah!

I also used some retired Brights DSP for the upper and lower section of the main panel. I’ve included the link below to the current Brights 6×6″ paper stack so you can easily replicate the card with currently available products.

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