Watermelon Birthday!

This is not a typical "21" year old birthday card but it fit perfectly for our son's birthday this weekend.  With an August birthday, he has opted for watermelon instead of a traditional birthday cake for a number of years.

The card base is 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches (a "large card") which is made by folding an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of cardstock in half. I cut the watermelon from the new Cheerful Seasons cartridge at four inches.

There are four layers for the watermelon, the basic key and shift and the layer key and shift.

Here are the pieces of the large slice.  I knew I wanted to use a watermelon slice on his card.  When I counted the seeds in the watermelon I realized there were exactly 22 - so I had the perfect sentiment!

For the "21" on the front of the card I used the font on the Wild Card cartridge.  The sizing of the sentiments and letters is based on the card sizes so it is easiest to check the Real Size box once you have measured your card to determine the actual size you need.

I welded the words for the sentiment using Cursive 101.  This is a great cartridge for welding words - they fit together very easily.

I measured the available space on the card and found it was about five inches wide.  I typed in the words at one inch (the smallest size you can set on the slider bar) and then applied kerning at -.1 and used the nudge arrows to space the words properly.  Then I checked weld and used the lower right handle to proportionately resize the phrase to fit in a five inch space.  It ended up being about 2/3 of an inch high.

I used the smaller wedge of watermelon on the inside of the card.

The sentiment is from the Wild Card cartridge - once again you should use the Real Size box to get the size you need for the sentiments on this cartridge if you are not making the card they were designed to fit.  The sentiment cuts as three separate words and I spaced them differently than they appear on the key when I added them to the card.

The watermelon birthday cake was made by slicing the two ends off the melon and then cutting the center section into "cake" wedges.  The top "frosting" is melon balls piled high and the entire "cake" has lime juice poured over it which gives the melon an interesting taste.  His girlfriend found the recipe online and did a great job creating the festive cake - I just added the candles!

You can wish on a watermelon cake just like you do on a "normal" birthday cake!

Here is one more look at the card - the red gingham paper is some long discontinued Creative Memories paper and the watermelon and sentiments are all cut from Core'dinations cardstock.  I used multi-cut on 2 to get a clean cut on the sentiment.

This is a simple card that was just right for this birthday!

At first I thought I would not use the Cheerful Seasons cartridge as much as the Reminisce Accents cartridge but I have found that many of the images have great details and three or four layers.  If you would like more information about the Creative Memories cartridges you can read my review at THIS POST.

This is the last call to play along on the Scrappy-Go-Lucky blog hop.  All of the cards have been revealed so it should be easier to figure out the theme.  Remember - your guess at the theme and your favorite cartridge must be posted in a comment on Mandy's Original Post on the Scrappy-Go-Lucky blog to be eligible to win one of four new cartridges, Country Life, Happy Hauntings, Rock Princess and Winter Frolic.  The Schedule and links to the blogs are in THIS POST.   The winners will be drawn on Wednesday, August 18th (that is Perth, Australia time, so sometime Tuesday for those in the US). Good Luck!

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