Train-tastic Birthday Card!

Here is a little train birthday card which I have made for two challenges. 
Birthday Sundaes Challenge #28 was to create a birthday themed card using buttons.  I used buttons from my stash as wheels on the train and its carriage.
Card Positioning Systems had this great sketch that inspired me to do the train on the card.

As soon as I saw the sketch I thought of train tracks for the long strip across the bottom of the card.  The engine and the carriage represent two of the squares along the bottom of the sketch. 
I had a lot of fun making this card.  I used the train from the 'Create a Critter' cartridge which is one of my favourites.  I use those images all the time!  The smoke from the train is also from this cartridge (it is actually a speech bubble which I used because I thought it looked like smoke from the train!)
The train track came from the 'Everyday Paper Doll' cartridge - I actually had to cut two tracks to get it to fit and then join them together.
Thanks for looking!

Some exciting news and a new sketch!

Yay!  I just had a look at the Birthday Sundaes site and was gobsmacked to find that my belated birthday card was one of their featured favourites!  I am so excited, I just cannot believe it!  You can check it out here if you are interested in having a peek!  Thanks so much! 

In other news, I have just finished a card for the Card Patterns Sketch 134.  I think this one will go to my Mum for her birthday (which is today).  It didn't turn out quite how I expected but I am still pretty happy with it anyway.  The ribbon, lace and buttons are from my Nana's stash so that adds a bit of an extra special element to it.  I tell you, I could look through the Card Patterns website for ages, the designers and the followers there make the most beautiful cards.  I have spent quite some time looking at all the gorgeous creations there!
Here is the sketch:


and my  card...

The button flowers are made from different sized circles which I cut on my cricut.  The largest is 1.25 inches and then each smaller circle is a quarter of an inch smaller again.  I inked the outside of the circles then scrunched them all up to give them a bit of a distressed look, then stuck them together.  After sticking them down, I turned the corners up a bit on the circles to give them a bit of dimension.  I just used DMC embroidery floss for the buttons.  Pretty simple really!
Thanks for looking!

Mojo Monday Challenge 208

I've been finding some great websites with card sketches and challenges on them.  Mojo Monday is one of my latest finds and their current challenge is a sketch where you can choose to do a round or square card.  I usually lean towards clean, straight lines with my scrapping and card-making so it was super tempting to just make the square card - those straight lines are just so appealing to me!  However, I decided to step out of my comfort-zone this time and have a go at the round card and loved the end result!  I had a lot of fun making this card and it was definitely outside of my normal style.  Here are the sketches that were given as inspiration...

...and here is my interpretation of the round sketch:

I love the little butterflies and the lace flower.  The best news of all is that I still have 5 days left to enter it in the challenge! The round card was actually really easy to make.  I just cut two scallop shapes on my cricut machine (4.25 inches with 'real size' dial on Birthday Bash cartridge) then I followed instructions from here to learn how to put it together.  It literally took less than a minute to put together, then all that was left to do was embellish.  Easy!