Get Carded: Cooking Up A Happy Birthday

Hello! We visited our out-of-state daughter last weekend to celebrate an early birthday with her. Her birthday's actually today, though, so I'll show off the card I made for her. 

Materials used:

• white card stock
• art paper scrap (top edge of card)
• orange art paper scrap
• cookware ad from 1974 catalogue
• image of woman from 1940's crafting magazine
• "cooking up a happy birthday" - orange ink stamped on white card stock scraps; orange ink edging on these scraps
• vintage black eyelet
• decorative yarn
• "The cook was in very good humor" - words cut from 1930's grammar book

A close-up of the card:

I found the cookware ad first and it was a happy coincidence that the colors of the woman's outfit was a close match. It may seem odd to use a vintage cookware ad for our daughter's card, but there definitely was a method to my madness. The cookware shown above is similar in appearance to two matching saucepans I'd found for my daughter several years ago when she needed cookware for the first time. The woman who sold me these saucepans at a garage sale told me they had originally been her grandmother's, so it wasn't surprising that they looked like they came from the same era.

Of course, saucepans that old aren't going to look as pristine as the set in the ad does. Over time some of the interiors had chipped away, and more recently, our daughter had accidentally burned the bottom of one of them. I'm sure she could have used enough elbow grease to get it clean. But when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, replacement saucepans were one of her requests.

Not only did the cookware ad on the card reference the old saucepans, it also foreshadowed her present from us: I found a cookware set on sale, and in the color that matches her kitchen linens, so the purchase was a no-brainer. She wasn't expecting such an upgrade from her two old saucepans, so she was delighted with her gift. 

So yes, you could say we cooked up a happy birthday for her!