Have a Seal-y Great Birthday!

Today's card was inspired by sketch #221 @ Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge and will be entered @ Stampotique Designers for "Use Tape" and @ Seize the Birthday for "Splatter". 

This super cute card was made by starting with a lilac top folding vertical A2 sized card front and lining up strips of coordinating washi tape across the card bottom to mimic the banner flags from the sketch.

Using a stamp set from Close To My Heart, I stamped the seal scene piece by piece in archival ink with the aid of a stamp positioning tool. ( I did test the stamp positions out first on a piece of scrap paper  to make sure I was happy with their placement)

I chose watercolor crayons to color this time, blending them with a blender pen and topping the birthday banner and beach ball with clear Wink of Stella shimmer. Using a black micron pigma pen, I free hand drew the horizon line along the bottom to help ground the design.

I then fussy cut out the identical scene I had first stamped on scrap paper to use as my mask while splattering the beautiful FSJ Silk. When that was dry, I then sent my colored square through my diecutting machine four times to add the straight stitched edge (die set from Lawn Fawn) around the perimeter.

To make the flower embellishment, I sponged pink dye ink and Wink of Stella over a white paper flower and then layered a smaller flower punched from vellum with a mini white brad to the middle. The darker lavender strip was mounted on the card front with a full strip of foam tape, which allowed me to make the indented texture in it with a ball tipped stylus for added detail and dimension. The last step for the card front was to heat emboss the "happy birthday" sentiment across the bottom of the card 3 times in Pearl white powder.

Inside I simply stamped a retired TAC birthday wishes and accented it with a GellyRoll Stardust pen and a snippet of washi tape left over from the front.

that's it for today...until next time~