Dino-rific Birthday!

Happy FRIDAY!!! Yes - I am excited - can ya tell? Well - I recently started working part-time. I have been a stay-at-home-mom for 7 years. I was nervous getting back "out there" - but it is turning out to be a fun experience! So TGIF has a re-newed meaning to me. It means I get to spend the whole weekend with my boys (my 2 little men and "Daddy").

Speaking of my two little men, I thought it would be FUN to make a Happy Birthday banner for a boy's party. So - what do little boys like? DINOSAURS!!! Both of my boys think they are pretty cool. So I reached out for my stamp set Dino Mite by Our Craft Lounge. It SCREAMS "make a dinosaur themed birthday party"!!! I sat down and really thought about what I wanted my end result to be. I knew I wanted to use my Nestabilities - and that I wanted to embellish each letter - but had to keep it "masculine".

I figured out what Nesties I thought would be good for the dinosaurs and went from there. I chose to use two different shapes - Labels Four and Curved Rectangles. I LOVE the end result of how they worked together!

For the alphabet, I used a stamp set by Technique Tuesday - Main Street Lowercase Letters, Extra Large. For alphabet stamps, Technique Tuesday is truly a step above!! They are fantastic for special projects and scrapbook pages. And because they are clear, I was able to cut out the shapes using my Nesties and then stamp later.

Once I started thinking about colors, I decided to see what embellishments I had that could be "masculine" - but matched cardstock and ink that I had. So through my embellishment drawers I went. I kept going back to BUTTONS! My friend Lana *hearts* buttons - and she has kind of made me develop a bit of a sickness for them also. So - I had a plethora of buttons to search through -and found 3 main colors that stuck out at me: dark brown (matched my Chocolate Chip cardstock by SU!), olive green (matched my Old Olive by SU!), and blue (matched my Baja Breeze cardstock by SU!). I found the coordinating Copic markers and went to town.

Additional accessories used include chocolate chip grosgrain, Extra Large eyelets (SU!), aged brass hardware (SU!), and some hemp twine. I really had fun embellishing each piece.

I hope you find it as fun as I do!!! My youngest (3 year-old) LOVES it and wants to touch it all the time. Aaaah - what torture it is to look and NOT be able to touch because Mommy doesn't want grubby little fingerprints all over her work. LOL

Have a FANTASTIC weekend!