Happy Birthday | CSI Cold Case File No. 308 + Paper Issues Free File Challenge

Have you played with our stash-busting Cold Cases at CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration? It's a great way to use up some of your old stuff! As a Paper Issues design team member, I always like to combine my CSI challenges with Paper Issues' challenges. They have so many FUN challenges.

Here are the Case File and clues for the CSI challenge:

Image credit: Oh Happy Day

Product clues I used: older bright, colorful papers; buttons, bling, a never-used stencil with texture paste, a birthday-themed title by 2Crafty, one of our prime sponsors this year--I painted it white and then added glittery Stickles.

Design clues: Pie chart, tone-on-tone, papers in rainbow order, fringe.

The Paper Issues Free File challenge is to use one of their hundreds of FREE cut files. There's seriously a FREE cut file available for any layout you can imagine! I used the cut file called Slices of Life.

Here are some details from my page.

I love the inspiration image and wanted to try to recreate that rainbow donut element. I had in mind something similar to what Lynette Jacobs created, with buttons behind the cut file, but she beat me to it, so instead I backed the circular pie chart cut file with a bunch of old patterned papers in rainbow order, meeting several of the clues (old bright, colorful papers; old papers with the colors from The Scene; create a pie chart, use papers in rainbow order).

You can see I used bling in the form of the old Heidi Swapp crown, and another clue was the fringe. The birthday element I used was the chipboard title piece by 2Crafty, from when I was on their design team. I painted it white and then coated it with Stickles. They're a sponsor this month!

The pie chart sort of looks to me like a cut birthday cake from a bird's eye view. And I can never pass up the opportunity to use up some of my millions of buttons, so I added them on top of the patterned paper. I also added Stickles to the clouds, which I fussy-cut from an old My Little Shoebox paper.

The stencil is by Echo Park, and this was the first time I used it, which is another clue. That chipboard frame is by 2Crafty. The crown and the glittery elements I added were a nod to the caption my friend had written on Facebook, with this picture of her daughter's birthday.

I hope you'll come play along with us at CSI and at Paper Issues. You could win a prize from one of our sponsors at CSI:

And if you play along at Paper Issues, you could win a gift certificate! While you're over at Paper Issues perusing all the free cut files, be sure to stop in the store and check out all the cool scrappy stuff for sale! Please use my code, Debbi (no e on the end), and you'll get 20% off your entire purchase!