February was a busy birthday month for me. The first week alone I had 6 birthday cards to send out! In going back and reviewing my calendar I realized I missed a friend's birthday so I still need to work on a 6 once. Belated. I still have 3 more cards to send out for the end of the month. I
t looks like for the entire month of March I have 3 cards that should be sent out. This card was made for a friend's daughter. She adopted her from China. I like to use red. I had wanted to put a lady bug on her card but I didn't have a stamp that I liked so I chose to use my bird stamp and color the bird red. Years ago I wondered how people were able to put different colors of stamped images on paper. It never occurred to me that people use markers and, therefore, could color the stamp with the colors needed for the design. Once I learned about that from my friend Lora, it was like a whole new opportunity was set before me. I love playing with my markers. I used a background stamp and decided to ink that in Real Red which I believe gives a nice background for the bird and compliments well with the red paper I chose. This background stamp is one of my favorite stamps, and what I realized lately is that a brayer would come in really handy. I have used this background stamp a lot with black and white cards. Last week was poking around the Stampin' Up catalog and saw another background stamp that I would like to add to my collection. However, there are so many stamps and so little time to play.
The card on the right side is a very pretty and very easy to create. I love to make my own background paper, but I also like to switch it up and use paper from Stampin' Ups designer paper series. I also love ribbon and like to use it when I find an opportunity to give an extra dimension to my cards. And, of course, my need to do some sort of stamping has me simply stamping Happy Birthday. I used my new oval scallop punch. At the moment it seems to be my tool of choice.
Okay, well this birthday card wasn't done in February. However, it is so pretty that I don't want to miss on sharing it with you. I sent it to my sister last month for her birthday. Last fall I received a call and was asked to make wedding invitations and decided to go ahead and purchase this beautiful stamp set that I had been wanting for a long while and now had an excuse to buy. I had a lot of fun with the set and would just sit and stamp roses on paper. I put the paper aside for another day. That day came when I was looking for something to add to the two roses I stamped and cut out and wanted something to highlight them. The only problem with making background paper to be used in the future is not remembering which color pink ink I used. I was inspired when I had seen white rose at the store with a touch of pink that touched the tips of the roses. I wanted to try and create the same idea so I delicately colored the rose stamp and then went over with the aquapainter to give my roses with white background a shade of pink brushed around the edges. I wanted to use some ribbon and I also have these beautiful brads that I purchased when they were a special sale item. So I combined the two embellishments and put them together. I haven't been using Stickles as much lately but I did use a touch of Stickle on the center of the roses. And there we go a finished card with which I was more than satisfied.
