Altered state

I thought I'd start with Steven's birthday card and before you say anything...no I wasn't sniffing my Stazon ink pad when I was making it!!! I know it's got a shoe on it with a crystal on the flower and I know you're thinking this is more like a girls card but let me explain :D

About the same time or just after I started Ladybug Crafts Ink Steven started up his own company called Poor Wee Soles. His idea was to supply a rolled up shoe to night clubs for girls to buy after a night of dancing so they didn't walk around town with bare feet because their feet were so sore from wearing skyscraper heels. He touted his idea around Scotland, England and Ireland. He sourced his shoes in India and China. He had samples coming in left right and centre. He's applied for and got funding from The Prince's Trust. He put together business plan after business plan and would ask me to read them. I thought he had gotten someone else to write them but he assured me he'd done it himself. I didn't see anything like it in his school work! Months and months down the line he decided to concentrate on the high street stores and through a contact of his dad got the meetings in London last week with 2 BIG high street stores (I won't name them just now in case I jinx it). They loved his idea, his shoes ... everything and would like to sell them in their stores. There is still a lot of work to be done but fingers crossed his shoes will be on sale sometime this year.

So when it came to making his birthday card I thought of this...

I knew he would appreciate it and I was right...he gave me one of his lopsided grins and said 'cool'. Any mom who gets a 'cool' knows she got it right!

I didn't have the right font so I googled curly fonts and found this one. It's the closest to his own logo with the 'o' curled to look like one of his shoes.

The shoe stamp is from a set I have from Stampin' Up! None of the shoes were flats so I masked the heel (Annette's idea :D) with scotch tape to keep it ink free, removed the tape then stamped it after I'd typed out and printed Poor Wee Soles.

Now here's my altered clipboard and all I can say is 'stick to what you know Kerry' lol. This is not how I pictured it to look. I had all these grand plans and I think I fell flat on my face.

I originally painted the top red to go with other paper but decided I wanted to use this paper instead which was more pink than red so painted over the red with black. I stuck the paper down and sanded the sides in a downward motion so as not to tear the paper. Didn't really matter because it did tear a bit. I wanted to use my new Martha Stewart border punch and I think that's quite nice. The ribbon isn't exactly what I wanted but I needed to blend the paper and the black paint somehow.

Here's a closeup of the paper. I've made 2 clipboards...the other one is in the cupboad with my water tank drying. No I didn't spill water on it but another great idea I had was to modge podge the board so the paper was sealed down and the torn edges wouldn't tear any more. I don't know if you can guess what happened when I modge podged it...I got a gazillion bubbles!!!! I'm hoping the heat from the tank will dry the bubbles flat :p

I think I'm gonna take a class in altering before I attempt something like this again. I wonder if I have enough time to order another couple of clipboards before I leave on Thursday?

Have a great weekend. I'll have a couple of samples for you tomorrow and Sunday...back to my comfort zone lol.

Catch ya later x