Hello there!  I know a lot of people dread Mondays.  But today is a good one, because it’s time for a new challenge at Cards in Envy!  We have a fun one for everyone this time!  We’re calling it “Punch It”.  We want to see your punch art – artwork made from cardstock that’s been punched or die cut.  Rather than seeing a large shape used as a layer, we’d like to see main elements of your card design made from punches or dies.  As always, make sure your card is an A2 size (4.25″ x 5.5″) and is 1/4″ or less in thickness to fit in an envelope.

Over the last few years I’ve seen several cards in the Splitcoaststampers.com gallery where the card maker has used punches or dies to create the characters from Angry Birds.  I’ve always thought it would be fun to make one, and this challenge was the push I needed to go ahead and do it.  I used this particular card for inspiration and measurements.  I used the Word Window punch for the eyebrows and cut off the rounded ends.  I didn’t have a 3/8″ punch for the pupils of the eyes, and 1/4″ punches were too small and looked weird, so I used my 1/2″ punch.  For the beak, I punched a 1″ square, cut it in half diagonally, and then trimmed about 1/8″ off the hypotenuse of one triangle to get the smaller half of the beak. I had a lot of fun creating this bird, but I didn’t consider just how large it would end up being once the head and tail feathers were added.  I had it all assembled and I held it up to cardstock for the card base – and my jaw dropped (not in a good way) when I saw that it was too big to fit on a 4.25″ wide card.  Thankfully, it was just short enough to fit on a 4.25″ tall card, so I didn’t have to start all over and make a smaller bird.  I hadn’t originally planned to borrow the inspiration card’s starburst background idea, but in my state of near panic over the size of the bird, I couldn’t think of a better alternative.  After all, since the bird was going to take up most of the card front, there wasn’t but so much I could do!  To make it a little dissimilar to the inspiration card, I added some green to the bottom of the card to simulate grass.

So now it’s your turn! Check out the Cards in Envy site for all the challenge details, and share your punch art creation(s) with us by 7:00 p.m. eastern time Sunday, December 1. We’d love to have you play along with us!

Supplies:
Stamps: none
Cardstock: Poppy Parade, Whisper White, Basic Black, Daffodil Delight, Soft Sky, Baja Breeze, Wild Wasabi (Stampin’ Up)
Ink: Poppy Parade, Daffodil Delight (SU)
Other: 3.5″ standard circle Nestabilities die (Spellbinders); 1/2″ circle punch, Word Window punch (SU); 1″ circle punch, 1″ square punch (Creative Memories); heart punch (EK Success); sponge