Happy Horsey Birthday: Horse Pop-Up Card

So here goes this year's attempt at trying to impress my niece with a card.  In all honesty, she does seem to enjoy them so it's not like she is super difficult to please or has ever sneered at past attempts.  I think in her preteen/teenage way she quite enjoys them.

Now my niece has been taking riding lessons for years and horse themed gifts have happened more than once.  This year she even worked over the summer helping to clean barns and teaching younger kids to ride, so clearly she loves horses.  Why else would you have anything to do with horse poop?  So I decided I would do a horse themed pop-up this year.  It was more artistic and less child-like and that appealed to me.  I shopped around my initial ideas (rough drafts) with my family and my husband suggested more horses in addition to the initial two part silhouette and I tried it and liked it.  I went with shades of brown card stock and a green field.  I love the way the horse silhouette folds when the card is closed.

I decorated the front of the card with a horseshoe cut from gold mirror paper.  I doubled up some of the elements to give it more depth and then added the Happy Birthday banner using some Scraptivity  and Hero Arts alpha stamps.  I used some Vintage Photo distress ink to distress the stamped and embossed banner.  I sure hope she likes it.

Well the comment was, "This is my favourite card so far!"

See the pages list at the side, there is now a How-to for this card.