Bicycle Built for You: Retirement/Travel card

 Today I made 2 cards, though I only remembered to photograph one of them.

Both of them had a "ride" theme--one was Beautiful Ride by Stampin' Up!, a retired set intended for a wedding card, and featuring a VW Bug car. I used it for an anniversary card for my husband, so it may just show up here eventually.

Honestly--I am LOVING my commitment to make a card every day and use my stamp sets. I'm getting so many cards made, and with a variety of themes.

The other card I made today featured a bicycle, and is one of the many Lawn Fawn sets I just had to have. I have used it in the past--but really, that just likely means once. I have been a great card procrastinator!

The set is called Bicycle Built for You, and features both a male and female--you can use both or just one. While it's set up for a wedding or travel card, I decided to use it for a retirement card.

Bicycle Built for You stamp set & dies by Lawn Fawn

I was in France last year on vacation, so I couldn't resist the beret! I figured that the "bon voyage" message would work for a retirement card. 

The flag was one item I didn't die cut--I wanted to put it right on the card-just slightly under the road. I was so focused on doing so that I didn't press well and got a double impression of the top left part of the flag. I decided to roll with it.

I used Lawn Fawn's Road Border die to make the bike path--and Stampin' Up!'s True Thyme colored cardstock, which is a brownish green color. Cutting it with the die gave me 3 awesome pieces--the road itself, plus 2 hillside layers I can use for future cards!

I ink blended the background. Lately I've been trying to leave some of the blue sky less colored in blobs to make it look a bit like natural clouds instead of fake, cutesy clouds. What do you think? It's kind of hard to tell with the other elements, but I was pleased with it.

Something I heard from another cardmaker years ago was to put an element from the stamp set/card onto the envelope. I don't always have time when I'm rushing to do cards, but these past few weeks I've done it with most of my cards. You can see the bit of the envelope below the card--I put one of the phrases from the stamp set in the lower left part of the card.

Since none of the stamp set's sentiments was actually about retirement, I used one from a different stamp set, and put it inside. I store my stamp sets and my dies both alphabetically. When I wanted to make a road for this card, I looked for "road" and found the Road Border dies. When I wanted a retirement sentiment, I found a stamp set by Sweet & Sassy called Retirement Sentiments. Gotta love when names say it like it is!

Have a wonderful day--enjoy the ride!