Double Birthday Celebration

Here's another Asian themed birthday card I recently created with the Cricut Pagoda cartridge Design Studio, and Make the Cut. This one was for a double surprise birthday party for dh's aunt and uncle who both celebrate their birthday in September. I chose to use the koi, or carp image (from the Pagoda cartridge) since it is a symbol of strength and longevity in Asian culture. Since it was to be for a double birthday, I decided to use two koi.

In Design Studio, I rotated one of the koi shadows and welded them both together to create a frame for for the kanji. I knew I wanted to use the Chinese character for longevity ("shou" in Chinese or "kotobuki" in Japanese) for my card, but was disappointed that it was not one included in the Pagoda cartridge. Did a Google search on line for the character, copied one I liked, then used Make the Cut to render it into a cutfile and create a shadow for it.

Base of the card is String of Pearls Bazzill Bling, run through a Cuttlebug embossing folder from their Asian bundle. Sprayed the red koi pieces with Tsukineko gold spritz, and assembled everything with foam dots for dimension. I used metallic gold cardstock for the koi, currency gold cardstock for its shadows, and red foil cardstock for the kanji. Corners were cut with a die from the Sizzix Architectural corners set.