Totoro 2nd Birthday 

My nephew is a fan of the Studio Ghibli movies, and ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ is a favourite. For his 2nd birthday, I made him a Totoro card.

I sketched a design based around Totoro sitting amongst leaves, as if in a tree, holding two balloons.

I drew Totoro as a vector illustration and printed him out at the size I wanted. I coloured him in using promarkers and Karisma colouring pencils, and added googly eyes. I fussy cut him out leaving a small white border so he would stand out on the card.

For the background, I used the Lil’ Inker Quilted Stitched die on white card, then adhered this to the front of an A5 card base.

I die cut from white card a Lawn Fawn Circle frame die. I coloured the frame with dark green distress ink, then coloured the circle with blue distress inks to resemble the sky. I stuck the blue circle on to the card base, layered the circle frame with foam tape then adhered to the card too.

From more white card, I die cut lots of leaves from the MFT Stamps Leafy Greenery die set. I then used distress inks to colour them in. I placed these around the circle frame, leaving space in the top right and the bottom left.

I attached Totoro to the card with foam tape, so he sat on the circle frame. I put a couple of lengths of twine behind his hand before attaching him to the card. These will be the balloon strings.

For the balloons, I die cut the star and oval balloons from the Lawn Fawn Party Balloons die set, then coloured them with distress inks. I pulled the twine strings to the top right of the card, then stuck the balloons down with foam tape on to the card over the top of the twine. I then added a gold glitter die cut ‘2’, cut using the Avery Elle Count On It die set.

The banner is die cut from white card using one of the Lawn Fawn Everyday Sentiment Banner dies. I heat embossed in gold a birthday greeting from the (stamp set), then added the banner to the card using foam tape. I finished the card with a few enamel dots around the banner.