Birthday Koi

Here's another card that I actually created a while back, but haven't had the chance to post till now due to the holidays. This recessed window card was for my Dad's birthday back in November. Seems I've been doing more recessed window cards than any other kind of card lately. I think it's mostly because the size, the orientation, and even the depth of the window is easy to alter without having to worry about too much math. Also because shadowboxes always intrigue me and I love how this type of card reminds me of a shadowbox.

Let me start off by saying that boy, oh boy I sure struggled with this card! Spent hours on the internet searching for an image of a koi suitable for rendering into a cutfile without much luck, and finally succumbed to the realization that I would have to try and draw my own. LOL, I'm by no means an artist and as a result my poor drawing produced a not so great cutfile. (About this time I was so wishing I had dished out the $10 plus shipping to buy that Cheery Lynn Designs Koi die, even though I knew would probably only use it once or twice). I cut my koi from white cardstock with the plan to do a white on white type of card...but somehow it ended up looking sort of eerie and spooky like ghost fish...Eeek! Had to take my orange Copics and color them in to give them some life!

I sandwiched the colored koi between 2 sheets of acetate and adhered the white frame with the swirls on the top of it. This was then glued to the front of the window opening, which made it look like the koi were swimming on the surface of the water.

On the inside, I used Solly Pop font, created by the amazing Kay of Clever Someday for the pop up birthday greeting. Kay shares her font on her blog, complete with detailed instructions on how to use it to create your own pop up word cards.  

Added one more koi cut to the inside, this time a multi-colored one, colored in with Copics as instructed by my friend Patti on her blog here. Water lily image is an internet find, rendered into a cutfile, colored with copics and added at the last minute in desperation to fill in the empty space. Label for sentiment is from the Cricut Elegant Edges cartridge. So relieved when this card was finally done! Sometimes things just don't turn out quite as you imagined...