Happy Birthday Balloons

This July 4th weekend, Operation Write Home is hosting a Virtual Card Making Party. The idea is that, every 2 hours, a different blogger will have a challenge to make one or more cards using a specific theme. One of the challenges, at the a2z Scrapbooking blog, is to make a card appropriate for a child, using paper piecing. So I decided to do a birthday card.

I used this sketch from OWH as the basis for my card:

I am not sure if the width measurement in the sketch for the long vertical piece is correct, since it looks proportionally narrower there, but I used that measurement for my card anyway. Hey, it works!

I used a stamp from this Hero Arts set for the balloons. I stamped just the balloons once on each of 3 patterned papers from My Mind's Eye "Boy Crazy" 6x6" paper pad, then cut each balloon out. I stamped the whole image, using the same black dye ink as I'd used on the patterned papers, onto a piece of white cardstock, and glued the patterned balloons in position over that.

For the greeting, I cut a piece of yellow paper with a subtle stripe pattern that I had in my scrap stash. I stamped the "Happy Birthday" from this set by Lawn Fawn in Versafine Onyx Black ink.

The paper for the vertical layer is from the same My Mind's Eye pad. I cut it to size, and adhered it to a piece of aqua blue cardstock. Next I adhered the greeting panel. I felt the contrast between the balloon panel and the rest of the papers was too stark, so I inked the edges of the white cardstock with Barn Door Distress ink. The I stuck that down, adhered the whole front to an A2 card base, and was done.

I'm also entering this in Simon Says Stamp's Monday "W is for White" challenge. (used white cardstock for the background of my paper piecing)