Blog hop: Birthday layout

Please note - the giveaway has now ended and I used a random number generator to select my winner - who will be announced on the BF blog soon. Many thanks for taking part :)

Hi, hi, hi.

If I'm a stop on your hop between the blogs of the Banana Frog Design Team today then 'hello' / 'hello again' / 'welcome' / 'nice to see you'.

The same greetings apply even if you're not partaking in the hop. I like it when you drop by too.

This month, to celebrate Banana Frog's 4th birthday Bev is offering a set of stamps of your choice as a giveaway on my blog ... and on every other stop of the hop too. The winners will be selected at random from the comments on each blog and will be announced on the Frog blog next week [I'll try and mention it here too!].

Appropriately enough, the theme of this month's hop is 'Birthdays' and along with Banana Frog someone in our house had a birthday too [if you hopped by here last month you might just recognise the style of the moustache card I made for him below]:

So, with a birthday theme to follow, it was pretty obvious who I should base my project on:

It's a very restrained layout for me using only two main patterned papers and neutral ones at that!

I kept my title clean and simple too, stamped in 'Smokey Grey' Versafine the 'Happy Birthday' is in Banana Frog's 'Pharmacy' font, while 'blue eyes' is in 'Teen (Tiny - Full set)' :
The 'Teen (Tiny - Full set)' also has the days of the week stamps in it, one of which I used here on top of an old ticket from a Alter That ephemera kit:That ticket, along with the tiny strip of Basic Grey at the bottom are there to add a tiny touch of grey/blue to .... please don't make me say 'to bring out the blue in his eyes' ... it's too soppy for me ... but I do like to match colours! To create the raised dots at the bottom of the page I dipped the end of a paintbrush into a pot of Shimmerz Pearlz in 'Grey Flannel' [from 3dJean] and dabbed it carefully on to the paper. I then added a few blobs of Glossy Accents .... and, convinced that I'd end up smudging and ruining it, I put it well out of harm's [and my impatient fingers'] reach until it dried!
Thanks for hopping by today, don't forget to leave a comment if:

• [a] you want to be in with a chance of winning a set of Banana Frog stamps;
• [b] you don't mind about winning anything you just want to leave James a compliment about his eyes [he will get big-headed though ... so please word your comment carefully or he'll be impossible to live with!] ;)... or
• [c] you have something you're just bursting to tell me although I can't promise to keep it to myself. I've used up all my will-power this month in not revealing to James how Lost ended after I got up to watch the finale at 5am on Monday while he didn't see it until 9pm on Tuesday. I was a paragon of restraint!

After leaving your comment, then don't forget to hop on to Kirsty Wiseman's blog for the next birthday themed project.

But before you do, I'll leave you with a few of James's birthday gifts and the homemade wrapping paper which I spray-inked in the garden causing nextdoor's dog's nose to go into sniffing overdrive! [To see more of the album just peeking out then have a look here]

Have a great Sunday and I'll see you tomorrow when I'll be rounding up my May in numbers ...how are we almost halfway through the year already??? How?

J :)

E.T.A: Thanks for your lovely comments - a few people have asked to scraplift this and that's absolutely fine by me! Do let me know when you do, it'd be great to see your versions of it :)