Happy Birthday

A former student of my mom's is having a birthday next week. She & I are both friends with him on Facebook, so I decided to make him a card. He loves the outdoors, so hopefully this will work for him!

I got my inspiration from this card that I found through Pinterest. I have The Crafter's Workshop "Aspen Trees" 6x6" stencil. The inspiration card used an embossing folder from Stampin' Up, and I felt I could replicate the look with my stencil. I had not looked at this stencil in a long time, and when I took it out, I immediately realized it would not work like I had thought. I had planned to do my background, then add texture paste over the trees, basically creating the trees & hiding the background for those portions. What I had forgotten was that the trees are the positive part of the stencil, not the negative like I would need for my plan! So I had to think about that for a while.

I came up with the idea to ink my background through the openings in the stencil, preserving the white of the paper for my trees. So I did just that, on a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper. I used Distress inks in Shabby Shutters, Bundled Sage, Peeled Paint, & Mowed Lawn for the "foliage" in the background; and Tumbled Glass, Peacock Feathers, & Salty Ocean for the sky. Once I'd finished my ink blending, I used a brush-tip black marker to color in the spaces on the bark of the trees. Then I removed my stencil.

For the foreground, I die cut a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper with one of My Favorite Things' "Scenic Safari" dies. I inked it with Mowed Lawn, adding a bit of Peeled Paint along the top edge for shading. At that point, I decided I could put my greeting on the foreground piece. So I trimmed my background piece down just a bit, and adhered it to a white A2 card base, to help me know how high to cut the foreground panel. After I cut the foreground, I dried the ink thoroughly with my heat tool. I treated it with my powder bag, and tested it by sprinkling embossing powder over it, to make sure no powder would stick. Then I placed it in my MISTI, and used that to help me position my greeting, from Hero Arts' "Happy Birthday" stamp set (discontinued). I stamped it in Versamark ink, and heat embossed it with Ranger Super Fine Detail White embossing powder. Finally, I adhered the panel to my card base.

I have had the wolf stamp I used for years. I don't know who manufactured it, or even where I bought it. I stamped it onto white cardstock with Hero Arts Charcoal ink, and colored it with my Prismacolor colored pencils. After I fussy cut it out, I adhered it to my card with foam tape.

I'm entering this card in A Blog Named Hero's July challenge: "Masculine."