Birthday Sundaes challenge #35

The challenge this week at Birthday Sundaes is:

Challenge #35 Include a tree on your birthday card and a birthday sentiment.

This one sure required a bit of thought!

I thought I'd make a sidestep card after seeing some fabulous Halloween projects on Amy's blog, Amy's Crafting.  She made a few sidestep cards with a Halloween theme and they are just awesome!  You can see her different projects here, here, here and here!  Her cards were my inspiration when making this birthday card.  She pointed me in the direction of some great instructions for sidestep cards, which not only had easy step by step instructions, but also had photos for each step of the process to assist those of us who require something visual as well!  Thanks Amy!

I love the saying on my card, 'Growing up is for trees - stay young and have fun!'  Perfect for this birthday card.  I found the quote here.

Sidestep cards are fun to look at and quite easy to make.  They are lots of fun to embellish!  Here are some pictures to show some different angles of the card, so you can see how it looks and get an idea of how it is made:

This side view shows the ribbon that I attached to hold the card together - once you embellish a sidestep card they get pretty heavy and your card tends to do the splits and kind of flop down flat instead of standing up!  So I attached this ribbon to the inside to hold the card in position (it can't be seen from the front view).  This was a tip that was a part of the instructions (not something intelligent that I designed and thought of myself!)

Anyway, I love how this card turned out and I doubt that I would ever have thought to do a birthday card with a tree on it, so thanks for the great challenge Birthday Sundaes!  It's always good to be stretched with your creativity and think a bit differently to the way you usually do.  It also made me use a cartridge that I haven't touched in a while so that was a bonus too!

The tree was cut with Stretch Your Imagination cartridge.
The grass was cut from Plantin Schoolbook cartridge.
The bird is from Create a Critter (cut at 1 inch).
'Happy Birthday' sentiment is from Kaisercraft.
Stamped apple faces are Peachy Keen face stamps - everyday face assortment (never thought I'd ever need to use the tiny, tiny faces but now I have)!

On a different note, I was so thrilled this morning to look at the Card Patterns website and find my Reindeer card was chosen as one of their Super 6!!!  I could have cried I was so excited!  I loved that sketch and I think it's one that I'll use again.   Check out their website, the winning card by Fran is absolutely stunning.

Thanks for looking!