Age 4

It's been a busy few months and I actually started drafting this post at the beginning of May! Got myself so turned around that I just hadn't had time to finish it of and posting it until now and I've had to go through and tweak it a bit for the time lapse 😂

So in the middle of May my oldest nephew turned 4. I can't get over how quick the time has flown and how big he is now. We went to visit the weekend after his birthday for a family (socially distant) birthday party. He absolutely melted my heart when we were playing by saying "I love you". How adorable! 😍😭

Anyway the purpose of this post was to talk about his birthday card so on to the photo and what I did:

From conversations with L (nephew), and my sis-in-law, L is both Dino and superhero mad. Of course he had to have his own handmade dinosaur card. When L had told me names of dinosaurs, he said his favourite was a brachiosaurus. Talk about a big word, pronounced correctly from a 3-soon-to-be-4 year old 😲. Time for a bit of Google research to get the right dinosaur and make sure I didn't start with a stegosaurus as they are very similar until you get to the details of front leg height and shape of the head...

I downloaded an outline and traced it several times onto a piece of card. Knowing my luck the first would go wrong so I would need a spare! I used my Spectrum Noir Harmony water reactive  dyes in Friar Brown and Smoked Pearl, just dabbing the ink on with a sponge then using a paintbrush and a dab of water to blend the inks together giving it more of a realistic look rather than just splodges of colour layered on top of each other. This is the first time I've attempted colour blending so it did go a little patchy in places but this would be masked a little on the actual card.

With the dinosaur out of the way, I could start thinking about the rest of the card. As it is a child age card I wanted to incorporate the number 4 into it, and lots of leaves to simulate a tree top on the upper parts of the number. Luckily I have a variety of green coloured paper and card, and also a leaf shape die. Time for a lot of cutting to get the total number of leaves needed before laying it all out to see how it would fit together.

Nearly done now, just gluing it all down and adding in the "Happy Birthday" banner actoss the centre of the 4 the it is complete. I realised when I started gluing the leaves down that I didn't have enough so back to the cutter to make more and give a better tree effect at the top. The final details to add were the pencil markings o. The dino itself to show its legs, lower body shape and the eye. I had been considering a googly eye but on laying it out it just looked rediculous so I scrapped that idea. I did have to make a boxy envelope to fit it in which was probably more challenging than the card itself. 

I was really pleased with the results of this card. As far as I know L loved it and had a fantastic birthday which is all that really matters. ❤️