Crafty cat card with cut out bits!

Well, this is my first blog post of 2011 and also my first blog post in the new house!  If anyone ever suggests moving house to you over the Xmas period, tell them to go and take a running jump!  Yes, it is handy as kids and OH were off school and work, but that also meant no nursery open to take my 3 year old who almost achieved his lifelong aim to drive us all round the bend.  Now if he could have provided a van to drive us in, that would have been a great help.  So Christmas day for us was, here's your presents, unwrap them, look at them and then pack them into a box to move over to the new house... not the most fun we have ever had to be honest... but still, every cloud has a silver lining as I now have a decent sized craft area, just have to scale boxes to get to it at the moment!

What better card to crack open the new year with than a birthday card for my friend whose birthday is on 1st Jan?  I had an excuse not to do him one earlier as all my stufff was still packed, but my challenge over on Crafty Cardmakers this week was red and a die-cut.  Have to admit this was inspired by one of my favourite colours and also the fact it was a celebration of the new nesties I treated myself to but hadn't allowed myself to play with yet.  So new house, new year, new nesties lol.

The stamp I chose for this card is by Inca Stamps and is called Cat Blocks... can't see where they got that name from hehe!  I have had it sitting around for a while and not used it before and Peter's card seemed as good an excuse as any.  It's always hard to do a card for a man, so I was grateful of the challenge rules for this one.  I coloured the stamp with promarkers and then cut it out with my scalloped square nestie and cut a bigger square out of red paper.  I haven't made an easel card for a while so stuck to a simple fold and a centred image for this one.  The backing paper is a small piece of red and black almost marbley effect paper which I have had lying around for a while and matched the colour scheme perfectly.  I cut and stamped a couple more diecuts and edged with red promarker then stuck onto a torn-edged piece to create the stop.  I also tore some more strips of red paper and embellished with some black and red Happy Birthday sticker strips.

I would like to enter this card for the following challenges:

Crafts and Me - Paper Tearing
Allsorts - Fancy Fold