Recently I entered a give away on Shelly Hickox's blog - 'StampTramp' and won a couple of Sizzix dies! I was so excited as I love, love, love Karen Burniston's Pop n' Cuts. (I'm a big kid at heart and Karen's pop-ups are stealing, I mean STEALING my heart! Most people think 'travel' when they think of suitcases, but my mind was wandering and I was thinking - maybe create a child's birthday card with clowns and have balloons appearing to be floating out of the suitcase! After receiving the dies, my first stop was at Hobby Lobby where I found this cute balloon patterned paper to work with. Then I pulled out my chosen stamp set from the 'Big Top' collection -(head portions only) from Oxford Impressions (http://www.austingallerycom). After coloring the images with copic markers, I fussy cut them out. The Sizzix Thinlits #658954 helped create two loop trims that I attached to the edge of a sticker strip (Hobby Lobby - The Paper Studo - Birthday Boy #358838). From there I die cut a label from Sizzix Framelits #657913 to use for the message. I had some rub-on's in my stash that I used for the 'happy birthday' sentiment. Then I dug thru my stickers and found some little gold stars to make it look more festive. The suitcase die is a breeze to work with, and I added tiny brads to the corners to make it look old (don't clowns usually carry around old looking suitcases??....lol!. (I even found some paper at Hobby Lobby that had a leather look to it so that made my project go together even quicker!) I stamped the balloons, cut them out and tied some scrappers floss
