Celebrate

Day 4's theme for Bugaboo Stamps' 5th Birthday Celebration is a color challenge. They posted this palette, and challenged people to use those colors in a card:

This was indeed a challenge for me, since I'm not used to using these colors together. But that's the point, isn't it? I created the following card for this challenge:

I decided to use Bugaboo's "Frame It - Bears Birthday" digital image for this challenge. After printing it onto a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper, I used my Inktense pencils and a damp paintbrush to color the image. After the color had dried, I applied a wash of diluted Squeezed Lemonade Distress ink to the background, inside the frame area. Finally, I added some shimmer with my clear Wink of Stella glitter brush marker to the balloons and party hat. I also added some Glossy Accents to the bears' noses.

For the card base, I decided to keep it simple, since there was so much going on in the focal panel. I cut a piece of dark teal cardstock to 4.25x11", and scored it at 5.5" to create a top-folding card. I marked the position of the focal panel, and stamped the "celebrate" from this stamp set below that area, using Versamark ink. I heat embossed that with Ranger Liquid Platinum embossing powder. This was the first time I'd used this particular powder. I like it, but I'm not sure it works on dark colors so well. It just seemed to blend in a little too much. So, rather than start over on the card base, I took a white gel pen and adding some highlighting to the letters. Problem solved! Finally, I adhered the focal panel in place, added white cardstock to line the inside, so it can be written in, and this card was done! I will be sending this card to Send a Smile 4 Kids, for a hospitalized child to get on his/her birthday.