Whale of a Birthday

I needed to make a birthday card for my step-father so yesterday I set to work on it.  I knew I wanted to use some wood veneer numbers I'd recently bought but was struggling on which papers to use.  Long story short, I (finally) decided on the FP Down by the Shore collection.  I've been wanting to experiment with the new corrugated cardstock and the maritime portion of the collection has an especially nice masculine feel to it.  Prepare yourself for extreme cuteness - no, seriously, this chubby little whale gets me every time:

Whale of a Birthday

Isn't he *adorable*?!  My initial inspiration actually came from the central pennant, where you can see I layered up the wood veneer numbers (my step-father's age) and like I said, I just can't resist that whale and thought he'd be cute layered over the pennant, too.

 

For the corrugated cardstock, I simply stitched it with my sewing machine - the pressure from the presser foot did flatten the area I'd sewn but I also went over it twice so...  If you want to sew your corrugated cardstock and want to prevent it from flattening, I would recommend seeing if your machine has the ability to adjust the height/pressure of your presser foot (check the manual if you don't know this yourself).

I felt more pennants would help support the design and decided to use the anchors, since that's one of the challenge prompts in the current Stash Busters Challenges over on the 2Peas forum.  Then I fussy cut the whale and cut reverse scallops into the striped paper to help ground everything.  Lastly, I wrapped some twine around from which the pennants could hang and tied little knots in the ends.  I wasn't going to add a sentiment to the front but the 'happy happy day' sticker fit so nicely and I really liked how the pennants helped to lead the eye to it.

And yes, if you look closely in the above photo, that *is* lobster/crayfish fabric under the card.  :P

And just because I truly can't resist, I'll leave you with this: