Mr. Ian, the Penguin, is Turning 21.

So today is my housemate Ian's 21st, and it's a bit of a tradition for all of us here at the Woolly Mammoth to celebrate each other's birthdays (seriously, we've had the 'Happy 21st Birthday!!!!' banners up all around the house since Katie's birthday at the start of the year. I mean, why bother taking them down when there's a birthday to celebrate nearly every month?), and I have whipped up a card for everyone's birthday this year so of course I couldn't leave Ian out.

One of the hardest things about making cards is trying to get inspired - I find myself spending days trying to figure out what sort of card to make for specific people, trawling through sites like Pinterest and Tumblr for any sort of idea at all. Therefore, it was a pleasant surprise for me when I thought 'right. Ian. Birthday. Penguins!!!'.

This may or may not have something to do with the fact that Ian's one of the quirkiest people I know and owns a penguin onesie. And has pictures of penguins taped up in his room next to pictures of other wildlife and tennis players. (Why not a tennis theme, you ask - and I answer: penguins are wayyyyyyy cuter.)

So penguin it was. I typed 'penguins' into Tumblr search to find some references, and found this adorable GIF of penguins in sweaters. I mean LOOK AT THEM. In all different shapes and sizes and sweaters with hearts on!!

My workspace as I'm about to start crafting. I am a happy, happy child at this stage (because the stress of things not working out hasn't settled in yet).

With the reference picture (GIF) in front of me, I grab a piece of scrap paper from my stash (I'm not kidding, I collect discarded printouts from the university printers (which only print one side, usually), and use it for my own printing paper) and start sketching:

 I also sketched out the shape of the sweater so that I could use it as a template to cut my felt. Although, if you look at just the bottom half of the penguin, he kind of looks like I just left him in his underpants.

Once the sketch was done, I turned the piece of paper over, grabbed a 2B pencil and shaded in the back area of the image. This helps me transfer the sketch onto the actual cardstock/paper I want to use when I place the sketch over the cardstock/paper and re-trace my lines with more pressure. You could use carbon paper to skip the shading part, but childhood experiences with the carbon paper tells me that it smudges very easily - and dirty cardstock/paper is not something you want to be dealing with.

I transferred the image to three separate colours of card - a dark grey for the main body, a pearlescent white for the inner portion, and yellow cardstock for the beak and feet; I then cut them out and assembled the pieces using glue tape.

Next, I used the penguin itself as a guide to drawing the sweater - I placed Mr. Ian face-down on my felt and outlined the body (leaving about a 2mm margin down the sides so the sweater would look thicker) using a ballpoint pen. I also sketched out the collar and hem before cutting the sweater out.

Mr. Ian, about to get dressed. 

The sweater went on with double-sided tape (I don't think he's ever going to take it off), added 'IAN' to it using some glitter letter stickers I had, and that was Mr. Ian done. Yay!

I had a pre-cut kraft square card base that I bought some time back, so I started trying to figure out how to place Mr. Ian on it while leaving some space for '21' somewhere. That was when I realised I should have planned this better because Mr. Ian was rather chubby and took up a lot of space on my card. What to do. 

In the end I did another sketch of a balloon shape, which I transferred onto green and yellow card and cut out, before putting '2' and '1' stickers on each balloon. Further arrangement told me that the balloons would have to come off the card (which, in retrospect, is a very cool effect as it makes the balloons look like they're really floating. Here is the final arrangement:

The balloon strings are essentially a separated cross-stitch thread strand that I tied around the balloon stubs before dipping my fingers in PVA glue and running them down the length of the string. This stops any fraying, allows me to glue the string down more easily - and as an added bonus, allows me to add shapes to the string - I laid the glue-covered string down on a surface and twisted some parts into loops, leaving them to dry. I love the fun curls this technique gave the ends of my balloon strings. :D Meanwhile, the balloons themselves were attached using foam adhesive and left to hang off the edge of the card - isn't the floating effect awesome? 

Finally, I cut out a party hat for Mr. Ian out of crazy-pattern paper, just to fill up that empty space above his head. I edged the hat and balloons in glitter glue and added a few mini-stars, outlined the card in white dash lines and there it was, my adorable penguin birthday card. I really hope the actual Ian will like it. 

Mr. Ian looks like he could use more cake. 

Hope you enjoyed my post!! I have to get back to placement preparation and stop fawning over my adorable penguin. 

Love,

Hui.