Thomas the Tank Engine

My great-nephew Thomas is aptly named. At age two, he has developed a love for Thomas the Tank Engine. He pours through the Thomas catalog and books naming every engine and pushes the trains around the track with delight. When designing his birthday card, it was a no-brainer. I had to make a train card. Here it is:

I die cut the train using the Cricut Joys of the Season cartridge. I just love getting double duty out of my supplies and cutting a design for a birthday card from a Christmas cartridge made me feel like I was getting my moneys worth out of this cartridge. I cut the train twice so that I would have two extra cars -- one for each letter of his name. I then cut out letters and adhered them to punched circles. To finish off the cars, I die cut a flourish for the smoke coming out of the locomotive and used silver brads on the wheels. I cut out some clouds from the Graphically Speaking cartridge, stamped the sentiment and then dry embossed them with a Cuttlebug folder. Here is a close-up:

Since the track for this die cut was an oval and I wanted my track to go straight, I improvised and stamped my track using Papertrey Ink's Just the Ticket stamp set.

The card was a big hit with Thomas. Upon opening it, Thomas studied the card then surprised us all by reading the letters of his name. Here he is reading his name:

and posing with his card:

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Supplies

Cardstock: Papertrey Ink;

Patterned Paper: Imaginisce (Scooter's Vacation); Jilllibean Soup (Monster Stew); October Afternoon (Farm Fresh);

Stamps: Papertrey Ink (Just the TIcket)

Ink: Ranger (Jet Black):

Tools: Cricut by Provo Craft (Joys of the Season; George and Basic Shapes; Graphically Speaking); Cuttlebug (Swiss Dot Embossing folder);

Embelishments: brads by Making Memories.