Three Little Birthday Pandas
by Janet Katz

There aren’t many cuter images than panda bears to put on a card front. I used the Whittle Panda Pickup Kit to put together this slimline card. The panda bear die is a single solid die that cuts out 4 different panda bears with etch marks on them. As another design member has shown, you can use the bears as is, cut from a solid color; to make black and white pandas, you will have two choices. You can cut the pandas from white cardstock and take a black pen or marker and color the ears, eye area, nose, shoulders, arms and legs. I found this pretty tricky to do, so I tried another method used by a fellow team member. I cut the bears from both black and white cardstock and then carefully trimmed off portions of the white bear and glued them onto the black bear. I used a black marker to color the nose and the eyeball only. Once I got going using an Exacto knife to remove the eye ring and scissors on the rest of the bear, this became very easy to do. For a final touch, I added a bit of pink blush with an R30 Copic marker.

 

 

 

I used the bamboo die from the kit to cut out 2 colors of green bamboo. I glued parts of this together to create longer bamboo plants. I glued the bamboo onto a white cardstock panel measuring 3.25″ x 8.5″. I used a yellow green Copic marker to draw in some grass at the bottom of the bamboo.

 

 

 

Next, I placed my sweet little bear cubs in the bamboo, as though they’d climbed up it. Then I cut two balloons with the die that came in the kit. I ran two pieces of black thread from one panda’s hand up towards the top of the card and taped it in place with a tiny piece of washi. Next, I glued the balloons on over the tape. The bottom of the threads are barely secured in place, so I might need a dot of glue later on.

 

My next step was to glue this panel onto a slimline cardfront measuring 3.5 x 8.5″. I had already glued strips of black and white striped paper to the right edge of this cardfront to give it a nice little striped accent.

 

 

Finally, I added a sentiment stamped with a stamp from the kit and backed it with a small piece of cardstock the same color as the balloons.

 

Think of all the fun and cute things these little bears could do on your cards.