Twenty

So, here's the thing.  My oldest child turns 20 this weekend and I don't know how on earth that happened so quickly!  I can remember him being born at 5lb 3oz and having to stay in the NICU for 7 days and I had to stay with him.  Luckily we were both discharged on Christmas Eve afternoon, which is also his father's birthday.  Then, in the blink of an eye, he's considerably taller than me, talks with a deep voice, has a beard and does drift-racing as a hobby. 

I thought today's sketch designed by the fabulous Jen Mitchell at Freshly Made Sketches was perfect for a no-nonsense, masculine birthday card for Matthew, who will probably skip the outside of the card in his rush to see how much money is inside 😬

And here is my card.

As you can see, I went with a rectangular card rather than the square card in Jen's sketch.  The reason for that is because I completely spaced on the square part when I was planning my card! The card base is white and onto that I layered a Cement Gray stitched panel.  The Steel Gray background die-cut is from Reverse Confetti and I did a bit of sneaky surgery by adding an extension under the horizontal panels to have it fit the sketch more.
 

The two horizontal panels are both stitched and the sentiment is from the Avery Elle Party Animal set.  I was looking for a no-fuss sentiment that would also fit nicely in the black panel and that one fit the bill.  As a pop of color against all the neutrals, I went for Tropical Teal for the numbers, die-cutting them from PTI's By The Numbers set.  They are popped up on foam tape.  No embellishments, no sparkle, nothing else went onto this card.

Thanks for visiting!  The design team have created some gorgeous cards so please head on over and check them out.

I'm linking this up to CASology who have a cue word of "gray" this week, as well as The Male Room who are looking for December Celebrations.

Products used:

Stamps:  Party Animal (Avery Elle)
Ink:  Versamark
Cardstock:  White, Black, Stone Gray, Cement Gray, Steel Gray, Tropical Teal (MFT)
Dies:  Stitched Rectangle Stax, Blueprints 20, Blueprints 28 (MFT), Straight Stripes Pretty Panels (Reverse Confetti), By the Numbers (PTI)
Accessories:  White EP

Cheers
Karren