Brothers Bday! Let's Sail Away--and a running family joke!

My brothers' birthday is coming up on April 2nd. J.J. (Johnny Jr.) is 4 years younger than I am, so I call him my "little, big bro" because, even though he is younger than I am, he is WAY bigger than me. LOL I don't know exactly how tall he is, but I am almost sure he is at least 6 feet tall, and even to me, being 5 foot even, that is TALL. I have to look up to him, lol. it's weird! this year, he will finally hit the big 3-0, I remember when he was 3, such a cute little thing, but boy was he trouble, with a capital T and R and oh never mind, capitalize all the letters! T-R-O-U-B-L-E!! :D but, I love him. We live very far away, across the country from each other, and we only get to see each other when we can both make it home for a holiday, which is very rare! He lives in Montana right now, he moved there for the air force and the traded to the national guard for a better job position that paid more. Now, he has a home of his own and his girlfriend just moved in with him, I am pretty sure they will be getting married at some point... at least I hope so. He deserves a good girl! :)

Well here is his card, a sneak peek, keep reading on behind the clicky link for more pics. :)

It's no secret, to anyone that knows me or my family, that we are all big lovers of fishing and camping. Well see, I decided to put a SAIL boat on my brother's card because a sail boat doesn't necessarily need a motor. See, in our family, everyone knows that when we go out on the boat, everyone except for my little big bro is allowed to water ski. well, this is because every time he gets in the water, puts the skis on, and ma or daddy attempt to pull him up when he yells that oh so fun "HIT IT!!!", the boat motor all of a sudden DIES!! No folks, I'm NOT kidding about this! it NEVER fails. J.J. has yet to water ski on our family boat, and from what I hear, on friends boats either. LOL a few years ago, he went back to florida to visit some friends and they took him out on the boat. Well, he went to water ski, and wouldn't you know it, the boat motor died.
thankfully, anytime he gets back in the boat, it miraculously starts (of course, after a few attempts). I can say, I think this is a GOOD thing. I believe that EVERYTHING happens for a reason, and J.J. is just not meant to water ski, and the boat motor dying each time he attempts it, is the universes way of saving his life!!!

Well anyways, that's our families running joke, J.J. always kills people's boats. LOL Here's the card! :)

   ~The base of the card is bazzill cardstock. and then there is another layer of bazzill cardstock and on top of that is deco cardstock from Christine Adolph, it's the "Beach Combing" cardstock from the "tidepools" collection. i LOVE this cardstock!
   ~I distressed all of the edges of all cardstock (except for the image piece) with the edge of my metal nail file. I find that using the edge distresses it better and quicker... the edge is sharper. 
  ~I used some really cool twine stuff, I guess it's called, I don't really know. I tied it around the card. and then tied a knot in the middle (under the image) and tied it around again. so if you take off the image, it's in a criss-cross, sideways X.
   ~the image is stamped in the Stampin' Up "sail away" stamp. I stamped this 3 times, once on the tan bazzill, again on red bazzill, and then again on white textured cardstock. I cut the red image out and adhered it with Stampin' Up dimensionals and then i did the same thing with the white part of the image for the sails.
   ~I used brown embroidery floss to sew the ropes of the sails. I tried to take a few strands off the twine, but that didn't work, it just all unraveled into small pieces, so that is woven together pretty well.
   ~I added 5 brown rust colored large eyelets to the side of the cardstock that the image is stamped on. I used the large crop-a-dile (the one for 12x12 pages) to flatten these onto the cardstock. i have seem to have misplaced my small crop-a-dile.
   ~I adhered the image to the card base with Stampin' Up dimensionals.
   ~for the sentiment on the front, I stamped "Hello" from the Elementary Elegance set and used my sharpie to make 3 small dots... I punched the shape out with the Stampin' Up modern label and attached ti to the card with brown rust colored mini brads (same color as the large eyelets)
   ~For the inside of the card, I used the seashell and reed stamp from the Inkadinkado 'down by the sea' clear stamp set. I stamped this image in Stampin' Up Chocolate Chip. I wanted a darker image so I stamped the image again on my clear sheet from my stamp-a-ma-jig and then placed it over the image lining it up, and then restamped the stamp 2 more times. It has the obvious brown color, but it's also rich and dark.

   ~I used the "birthday wishes" stamp from the Stampin' Up! Sincere Salutations stamp set. I did the same thing as above, to restamp it and give it a richer, darker color. Instead of stamping directly on top of the bottom image, I wanted it to look like it had a shadow, so I stamped it a little below and to the left of the bottom image. I love it turned out!!

Here is the card closed, on it's back so you can see the dimension to the front of the card :)

Well, I hope you liked this card.
Keep on Scrappin' and please, be kind to one another!
~Melisa Marie