Flying Easel Birthday Card

Over a year has gone by since I my first attempt at a flying easel card...it turned out to be a disappointing fail and since then I never cared to try another. But a few weeks ago while trying to come up with ideas for a birthday card for my mother in law, I decided it was time to give the flying easel card a second chance.

For my "flying" element, I chose to use a trio of paper lanterns with my Happy Birthday sentiment printed on them. Font used here is Chow Mein ttf. Lanterns were cut using a cutfile created in Make the Cut by welding circles and rectangles together. Colored them using Copics and ran them through a crimper to add texture, then hung them to the frame on a length of embroidery thread.

I used a label shape from Monica's Creative Room to create the frame and cut the window. Monica creates and generously shares some of the most beautiful labels,tags, doilies and cards in digital format on her site. If you haven't been there yet, you'll definitely want to check it out! My stamped and colored image is sweet Mei Li from Sister Stamps.

For the stop on my easel card, I used Make the Cut to create a cutfile of an image of a Chinese style medallion with a stylized character for long life found through an image search on the web. 

And here's what the finished card looks like opened to its display position.

Must admit that I was much happier with this second attempt at the flying easel card. The actual construction of the card is fairly simple; but trying to figure out how to decorate it was the hardest part for me. Hoping more ideas will pop into my head soon so I can try this card again!