Birthday card featuring a paper pieced book case background and a stack of books with a cup of coffee

 Still working on family cards for April.  I am sure I have seen this "book on a shelf" technique on line somewhere but could find no instructions on how to put it together so I had to just do it.  I created a large brown card to fit in an envelope from my stash.  I added the strip of orange/floral decorative paper on the left hand side of my card to simulate wall paper.  I added a layer of brown paper bag on the right hand side leaving a small border all the way around which would become the inside of my book shelf.  I trimmed a piece of brown cardstock into 1/4" strips and watercoloured them.  Once they were dry I added them as a frame on the right hand side of my card and then added two pieces in between to simulate shelves.  I trimmed heavy weight paper scraps into "books" varying the height and width until I had what I needed for my three shelves.  After arranging them, I took them one at a time and watercoloured their two front edges and all the sides with black watercolour to give them a bit of age and dimension.  Once dry, I adhered them all in place on the shelves.  I took a photo of my book shelf before I added my focal image.  My focal element features a stack of books with a cup of tea from BBJ (Black Berry Jelly).  It should have been coffee but I only realized that it was tea when I was colouring the tag!!  I watercoloured the image, scored the pages with a bone folder to give them some texture and added a line of paper piercing on all the sides using my pattern tracing wheel.  I stamped the little greeting (StampinUP) in brown and mounted it to my card front using 3D foam tape.  I am very happy with how it turned out!!  Therese