Choo Choo, Coming Through

This is another card I made back in November for a little fellow celebrating his first birthday.  It was a special request from our Elaine to make a Thomas the Tank Engine card for Jamie.  Jamie is the nephew of Elaine's partner Andy and during a hospital appointment, a couple of months after entering the world, they discovered that Jamie had a heart condition which meant an immediate transferal by ambulance to Glasgow for surgery.  It was a very scarey time for his mum and dad and other members of the family and it was understandable that they wanted to make a fuss of him on his first birthday. 

 

Lots of different punches and dies were used to make Thomas but most of the shapes needed were circles or rectangles.  Creating the face was the most difficult and it took a whole afternoon before achieving an expression I liked and not having to hand cut any of the pieces.  The eyes, eyebrows, nose and cheeks used Stampin' up's half, three-quarters and one inch circle punches with the small white dot in the eye punched from their build a bird punch.  The face was cut using a Spellbinders circle die and the mouth was created using their oval dies.

 

Thomas's body was made up from rectangular shapes with the roof being shaped using a Stampin' up edge die and a Woodware corner punch was used to round off corners on his buffer.  The wheels were punched using Stampin' up's word window die.

 

Thomas was layered on to blue and red card and patterned papers from the Nitwit Collection Candles and Cake.   The sentiments on the card were created on the computer and then die cut using cloud dies from Joy which were sponged with blue Encore metallic ink and layered on to the card to look like smoke from Thomas's funnel.  

 

Embellishments added to this card were the red metallic brad, a stitched border and butchers twine.  Although it took most of a day to put together I enjoyed the challenge and was chuffed (sorry couldn't resist) with the result.  I think more of these will be made for those little fellows celebrating their second birthday this year.

Thanks for reading today

Liz xxx

I'd like to enter this card in the following challenges

Through the Craft Room Door Challenge Feb. 11th-17th - Anything Goes

The Crafty Bloggers Network February Challenge - All About Boys

Crafty Cardmakers and more Challenge 109 - It's a Man's World

A Little Bit Crafty Challenge - Man Up

Feeling Crafty Challenge 25 - Dies and/or Punches