Muse Challenge #155

Hello!

Today I am very excited to be the Muse over on the Muse card club blog. When my sweet friend Ardyth asked me if I would be this weeks muse I was quite honored. :) Now I really do not want to disappoint so I went through a bunch of ideas stressing over whether it would be "musy" enough ( yeah I totally made up that word, but it works, no?) :D  In the end I decided to go with this sweet card.

Now, I have to admit that it was a two for in the sense that I needed a Birthday card for a party my youngest son was attending and I had not yet used this cute Elephant set from MFT.

My vision for this card was that I wanted the Elie to be carried away by 'tons'  balloons. I mean which kid does NOT love balloons? If any of my kids had enough balloons to carry away an elephant? Well, lets just say...they would be VERY happy!

So I started with (a LOT of ) masking and stamping the balloons. Once they were stamped I got to coloring them in with some copic markers. I then had to add some wink of stella to step them up a notch.  The Elephant was stamped onto a die cut and colored with copics too. The background was sponged with distress inks in limeade ice and mowed lawn on the bottom and tumbled glass and salty ocean on the top. the flowers were paper pieced since I did not think about adding them until after I had sponged the grass :/  I pierced tiny holes at the bottom of the balloons and threaded some embroidery floss through them was then attached to the elephant, who was adhered to the panel with foam tape. I attached this card panel to a scalloped frame that was cut from stone grey card stock which was then popped up onto an A2 white card base.

Once I finished this card I felt the need to do something with the inside and so this happened...

Now you would think that I would be happy to just STOP here and move on..... but you would be wrong!  You see, for those of you that don't know me. I am a go BIG or go HOME kinda gal.
So of course when it came time to wrap the gift I decided to make the wrapping paper to match the card. Which lead to this...

I absolutely LOVED making this card as well as the wrapping. I have to admit, I always claim to not be one of those card makers who make "cute" cards, and I envy those who do, but this one is pretty darn cute in my book and I am soooo in love with these elephants don't be surprised if you see more of them from me in the future :)

Anyhooo, I have kept you long enough. I do hope that I have provided you with enough inspiration to want to participate in this weeks challenge. I can't wait to see what you all come up with.

Have a great day and happy crafting
Tasha :))