Happy Birthday

 

 The current challenge at Seize the Birthday is, as always, "Anything Goes" (as long as it's a birthday card). But the optional topping this time is using green as the main color. I must admit, it was a bit of a struggle for me for some unknown reason. But I pulled out some of my green Distress inks & went to town! I think I came up with a pretty cool birthday card, if I do say so myself (& I believe I just did say so! 😁). 

 

For the postage stamps, I pulled out an older set, "First Class" from the Essentials by Ellen line (discontinued). Even though I have had this set since before Ellen Hutson closed their online store (maybe a few years ago), I have never used it. I came across it (again!) in my bin of unused products & decided I finally had to do something with it. So I pulled out several of the stamps & heat embossed them with Ranger Silver Super Fine Detail embossing powder onto a large scrap of Canson XL watercolor paper.

 

I used painter's tape to mask off the outer part of each stamp, & ink blended the inside portions. Like I said, I used some of my green Distress inks for most of the stamps - in keeping with the challenge topping - but also pulled in Shaded Lilac & Salvaged Patina for accent colors. On the 2 stamps with flowers, after I had ink blended, I used a wet paintbrush to "paint" over the blossoms with clean water, then picked up the water & ink with a dry cloth. This bleached the color slightly for a subtle two-tone effect. (I learned this technique in Juliana Michaels' recent "Stretch Your Stamps" class.) Finally I cut my postage stamps out with scissors, leaving a 1/16" border around each.

 

I used the largest of the "Scallop Rectangles" die set from Pink & Main for the mat. I cut it from mint green cardstock & ink blended from the bottom to about 2/3 of the way up with Cracked Pistachio Distress ink to give a subtle ombre look.

 

Then I positioned my stamp images onto the panel. This was actually probably the most time-consuming part - just trying to make everything fit AND look like a balanced composition. I finally got an arrangement I liked. There was a large-ish gap under the top floral postage stamp, though, so I decided to cut some small banners from patterned paper scraps to come out from under that stamp to fill the space. Once I had those tacked down to the back of that stamp, I glued all my postage stamps to the mat panel with liquid glue. In hindsight, I wish I had glued the purple stamp sideways, just to echo the top left stamp, but I didn't think of that until after the glue had dried, so it is what it is. I don't hate it, but I just think it would have looked even better.

 

After the glue had dried on all of my stamps, I added my scalloped panel to a green cardstock mat that I'd adhered to a white landscape A2 card base. I'm sending this card to Kristina Werner for the March Mail Call video next month, where the theme is ink blending.

 

I'm also entering my card in the following challenges:

 

• 613 Avenue Create: "Anything Goes" (not playing the optional twist)
• The Paper Funday Challenge #85: "Anything Goes" (not playing the optional twist)
• Inkspirational Challenge #363: "Visual Prompt" (used multiple shades of green, botanical touches, & repeating shapes)