AAA Birthday challenge #64 - critters

Hello again friends; I'm back again this morning to share my card for this month's brand new challenge over at the AAA Birthday challenge. This month Maaike is the hostess and she has chosen 'critters' as our theme.  Our guest designer this month is Karen so please pop over and leave her some love.  

My son recently asked me to make a 1st birthday card for his friend's little boy (I made a new baby card for him last year here so he's starting a bit of tradition lol!).  He asked for it to include a dinosaur as they had just decorated his bedroom with dinosaurs.  I wanted to make a shaped card so that it would be something special and saw a few on Pinterest so adapted the sizes to make mine based on a 5" x 7" card.  It took a little bit of fiddling but I eventually got to something I was happy with.  

Here is my card:

A close look at the cute dinosaur:

Plus I decorated the inside:

I began with a 5" x 7" card blank.  I used a ruler and pencil and marked where I wanted to cut and used my roll of double sided tape to draw around to get the curve at the top.  I then took a pair of long bladed scissors and carefully cut it out.  It's a little wobbly in some places but overall it looks good.  For the mat layer I traces around the card blank onto my patterned paper and then just sized it down again with a ruler and pencil and cut it out.  I adhered the paper with a mixture of double sided tape and liquid glue.  I stamped the dinosaur and a party hat onto alcohol marker friendly card and coloured them with Promarkers before using the matching dies to cut them out.  I did struggle to find a complementary colour to match the green dotty paper but my son really liked that so persevered and eventually found this pale yellow striped paper which I think matched really well.  I die cut a small label shape to go behind the dinosaur along with a happy birthday sentiment and the letters to spell the birthday boys name.  I added the sentiments with liquid glue and the label and dinosaur with foam squares.  For a finishing touch I added a few red sequins to match the dinosaurs spikes (I don't think that's the technical term lol!).  For the inside I cut a piece of the yellow striped paper as my mat layer, stamped the sentiment in black ink and a tiny dinosaur at the bottom of the card also in black ink.  My son loved the card and so did his friends so that made me happy.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges (I hope you agree my dino is an animal/critter):

Addicted to Stamps & More challenge - birthdays

Craft Rocket challenge - animals

Crafty Animals challenge - ATG must include an animal

Crafty Catz challenge - ATG optional twist hot colours

Creative Inspirations - ATG

Critter Crazy challenge - ATG with a featured critter

I Love Promarkers challenge - ATG/masculine

Make My Monday challenge - colouring mediums (I used alcohol markers)

PINspirational challenge - die cuts

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge - ATG

The Paper Funday challenge - ATG optional twist: critter crazy

Word Power challenge - #8 (sentiment is the focus of your card)

The Design Team have created amazing cards as always so please pop over to the blog and check them out and perhaps leave them some love on their personal blogs.   

I hope you will be able to join in with the challenge this month but don't forget it has to be birthday themed.  I can't wait to see your creations in the linky.

Enjoy the rest of your day and thank you so much for stopping by.

Love and hugs, 

Card ingredients:

Lawn Fawn - Rawr stamp & matching die

Lawn Fawn - Year 2 stamp & matching die (for party hat)

Promarkers

MFT - little letters dies - retired

Heffy Doodle - alcohol marker friendly card - store now closed

Heffy Doodle - dinky dinos (for tiny dinosaur) - store now closed

Heffy Doodle - showtime frame dies (for label) - store now closed

Spellbinders - simply perfect mix & match sentiments dies

Spellbinders - scarlet colour essential smooth disc sequins 

Pre-made 5" x 7" card blank

Making Memories - 12" x 12" green dots paper (from multipack Kate pad) 

yellow striped patterned paper from my stash