Builder Wheel Birthday Card

Hey all! Happy Friday! SU! has a new product I want to give you the skinny on today. They're called Builder Wheels, and there are 6 styles available in the Summer Mini Catalog on pages 8 and 9. These wheels are designed to be used with the Jumbo Wheel handle. They make quick work of card making, and allowed me to create a great masculine birthday card. But first, a bit more detail on these wheels.

The wheels coordinate with each other and have two themes: friendship and birthday. The three I bought were the birthday set, which features Candle Crazy, Birthday, and So Many Stars. They do not have to be purchased as a set; they are available for mix and match. I liked the Candle Crazy so much that I bought 2 of that wheel and the Birthday wheel to create my border/main image.

The wheels must be purchased with a Builder Wheel Spindle and Spacer pack, which allows you to attach them to the handle. The spindle and spacers also allow you to use each wheel by itself (like I did for the envelope) or together as a set in the handle. You can purchase an uninked cartridge and juice it up with whatever reinker color you want, or you can roll it on an ink pad. Because of the length of the Birthday wheel's message, I would recommend the cartridge. All that said, I didn't use one for this project because I didn't remember I had any until after I was done! The cartridge insures even ink distribution without running out before you're done rolling.

Enough talk, here's the card! I used Not Quite Navy classic ink to roll the wheels. I started with a full, 8.5" width of Very Vanilla card stock because I wanted to get the entire "Happy Birthday to You" message to see how long it is. It's about 7", so I trimmed off the "to You" part and went with the rest as my main image.

Some quick coloring of the candles with Soft Suede and So Saffron, mounted it on Kraft and attached both layers to another mat of NQN that I used eyelets in the corners to allow me to thread Linen Thread through to create a frame. The Linen background stamp (retired) inked in SS helped add some texture to the VV base, and before I knew it, the card was complete.

My fellow partner at Starbucks and videographer Aldo had a birthday yesterday, so this card will circulate among us for wishes and be given to him next week. I think I'm doing pretty well with the manly birthday cards this month, but there's one more to go. Be looking for that next week--have a great weekend!