Buttons and bows for a baby boy's birthday--MFT Idol Contest, Top Four

[First of all, I want to thank everyone who has voted for me and helped me get to the Top Four. Please don't forget to vote for your favorite Idol contestant (hopefully me!) from 10pm EDT tonight, May 12th until 10pm EDT tomorrow night May 13th! You'll find the poll here. There's a lot riding on this contest, now. One of the Top Four will be awarded a 6-month term on the MFT design team. I really want that person to be ME, so I really need your support! Thank you!]

Buttons and bows for a baby boy's birthday--how's that for an alliteration of "B"s, LOL? OK, it's MFT Idol upload day! Are you ready?!

Our challenge this week was to use the new Flopsey set--Birthday Flopsey. I love Flopsey, and this one, although he is great for ANY birthday, just shouts *kid birthday* to me. And, since I got my fill of pink last week, I decided to go blue this week. My neighbor's daughter is expecting a baby this fall, and even though I don't know if it's going to be a boy or a girl yet, I'll have this on hand if it's a boy. And, failing that, another neighbor has a little boy that will be 1 year old in December. So, it'll work for one of them ;-) I like to be able to use these projects as real gifts and not just stick them up on a shelf--I have enough dust-catchers already!

So, I have a set here that includes a decorated gift bag and tag, a card with matching envelope, a decorated picture frame, and a gift card holder. Here's the entire set:



Now for some closeups. First up is the gift bag and tag.



I think this is pretty self-explanatory except for one thing. See the little Birthday Flopsey on the gift tag? No, I didn't reduce him on a copier, LOL. What I did was to make him out of Shrink Film, aka, PolyShrink, aka Shrinky Dink. Don't you just love him?! I'll try to post a tutorial in a day or two but basically I stamped him on the Shrink Film with StazOn, colored him, cut him out, and shrank him using my heat gun. I tried him first with clear Shrink Film but the colors were not bright enough for me, so then I did him on white. He really stands out on that! I just love the way this turned out and I know I'll be doing more shrinking in the future! The large Flopseys were stamped on Gina K Pure Luxury 80lb paper with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored with Copic markers.

Here's a close up of Flopsey's paper pieced cake, Liquid Applique icing, and glittery flames:



And the sentiment:



Next a close up of the tag:



The inside of the tag:



And the back of the tag:



Up next is the card and decorated envelope. I think it's probably pretty self explanatory, too. This was the first piece I made--the rest were patterned after it, but changed up a bit. I wanted every piece to be obviously part of a set, but each one a little different. There's another shrunken Flopsey on the envelope, since this will not be sent through the mail, but hand delivered.



Here's the inside of the card:



And the back:



And the envelope by itself:



Next you'll see the picture frame. First I painted it with a dilute white craft paint because I wanted some of the wood grain to show through. Then I stamped a few bunnies from MFT Hoppy Easter set and colored them with Copic markers--actually that worked way better than I expected. They're small and matched the shrunken Flopsey pretty well in scale. This was the main thing I wanted the shrunken Flopsey for--the rest of them just kinda evolved from here. I attached Flopsey with 3M foam squares and added assorted blue and tan buttons and a gingham ribbon and bow.


Here's a close up of the shrunken Flopsey and the other little bunnies:



Here's the gift card holder, a la Sharon Johnson. I just folded some card stock, stuck the sides together with red sticky tape, and decorated it up to match everything else. Another shrunken Flopsey adorns the flap on this piece.



Here's the inside--I covered the inside of the flap to dress it up a bit and added a Velcro closure.




Thanks for dropping by today! Lots of pictures but I wanted to show all the little details that I think make a project special. And, if you've stayed with me this far, please don't forget to vote tonight (hopefully for ME!), Tuesday, May 12 from 10PM until tomorrow night, Wednesday, May 13 at 10PM at the MFT Forum HERE.

~Recipe~
Stamps: Birthday Flopsey, Hoppy Easter (MFT)
Paper: Whisper White, Kraft, Bashful Blue, Hostess Print Pack (SU!); Baby Boy Gingham (The Paper Studio); Pure Luxury 80lb (Gina K.)
Ink: StazOn Graphite Black; Memento Tuxedo Black
Accessories: Cuttlebug/Nestabilities; 3M foam squares, all blue and blue check ribbon, buttons, Shrink Film, Perle cotton, gift bag, frame, beads, Velcro dots (craft store); Copic markers; Stampin! Write markers, Kraft ribbon (SU!); heat gun; sewing machine; border punch (Martha Stewart), Sakura glitter pen