Happy Birthday Technique Card

Hello & Welcome!

Today's card is loaded with techniques. I usually have a good idea of what I want a card to look like before I start, but this card sorta "evolved." Here is the overall card:

I started with Winnie & Walter's "Leaf Effects" stencil and inspiration from Shay's Day 1 card of W&W's Share The Love Challenge. I liked the white on white, so I applied Faber-Castell's Glass Bead Glitter Gel. This stencil and gel are so pretty together with the textures, shapes and beautiful sparkle. (Truthfully, I did this panel several days ago and didn't want to put anything else on it. It just sat on my desk for me to enjoy.)

Next, after seeing Mou's challenge inspiration at Faber-Castell's blog, I wanted an image that could be colored with Gelatos. When I saw Designs By Ryn's "Hummingbird," I knew that was the one. Hummingbirds have that iridescent look, so I thought "Oh yeah! Color it with metallic Gelatos!" I stamped the Hummingbird with Versafine and heat embossed it with Sweet Stamp's clear powder on Ranger watercolor paper. Sometimes Gelatos mute black ink, so I created a resist to keep all the beautiful details in this stamp sharp. I colored over the image with Faber-Castell's Margarita, Snow Cone, Green Tea, Butterscotch, Metallic Mint & Metallic Blueberry Gelatos, then blended and smoothed them out with a water brush and fussy cut. The results are so vivid and shimmery.

The sentiment was the next challenge. I wanted a dark black sentiment on vellum. The trouble I've been having is Stazon is not dark enough and the dark inks don't dry on vellum (plus, my clear embossing powder dulls the image on vellum). So I tried Ranger's black embossing powder with my Winnie & Walter's "The Big, The Bold and The Happy" stamps. We all know the difficulties of using black powder, but vellum is less "sticky" than paper and I had no problems! Hooray! I've got my new "go to" method for stamping black on vellum.


It was also a little tricky attaching my images to the gel medium. Neither my Tombow Mono nor tape runner nor Ranger Matt Medium worked. So I tried Tombow Xtreme tape, and yep, that did the trick.  Plus you can't see the tape behind the vellum. Hooray again!

I finished this card off with a few Lucy sequins.

This card is entered in:

• Winnie & Walter's "Share the Love, Day 1" challenge

• April's "Take the Challenge with Mou" at Faber-Castell

• The April Customer Creation Challenge at Designs by Ryn

• The "Try to Resist" Monday challenge at Simon Says Stamp

• The "Happy Birthday" Wednesday challenge at Simon Says Stamp

Thanks for stopping.  Hope you find some of my tips helpful.
-june