Beautiful You Birthday

I’ve been having so much fun celebrating Amelia’s birthday, I forgot to post today. Oops! We went to breakfast today with her dad and Uncle Jon (my older son). What a wonderful morning with three of my favorite people on earth! The only bad thing was that Mike couldn’t be there too. He’s finishing up his doctorate and had an on site class this week.

I totally forgot to take a photo of the card I sent Susan (1/3 of our “Stamp Off Friday” trio), but she posted some of her birthday cards the past couple days, and mine was there today. YAY! So with her permission, I downloaded her picture of the card.

This idea came from my friend Kath Ricks, another Stampin’ Up!® demonstrator. She used a different stamp set – one that I didn’t have (until today. Thanks, Kath, for enabling.).

I stamped the image from the Beautiful You Stamp Set in one of the frames in the Petal Promenade Designer Series Paper (DSP). I’m not 100% sure about this, because I made the card weeks ago, but I think I stamped the image in Versamark, then embossed with Black Stampin’ Emboss Powder. This is my preferred method of watercoloring (I think I mentioned that yesterday too). I know the embossing powder is going to stay where it’s supposed to when I color.

I used a combination of Classic Stampin’ Pads and Watercolor Pencils for this card. The dress is Berry Burst, the lady’s hat is Highland Heather, and I colored around the image with a Pool Party Watercolor Pencil, then blended with an Aqua Painter. For her skin, I used a little Petal Pink.

After layering the DSP to Berry Burst Cardstock, I added it to a Highland Heather card base. This looked a little “blah,” so I embossed one side of the card base with the vine from the Petal Pair Textured Impressions Embossing Folder (TIEF). To blend the “seam” from the TIEF into the card, I wrapped some Gorgeous Grape 1/4″ Mini Striped Ribbon around the card and adhered it behind the stamped layers. I wanted to be sure to use ribbon and DSP because Susan and I tend to hoard, and we’re both working hard to use more of our products and hoard less.

The sentiment – stamped in Berry Burst on Whisper White Cardstock – is from Itty Bitty Greetings. The stamp says, “Fabulous at any age,” but I only used the “fabulous” part. You can use a partial image a couple ways. You can tape over the part you don’t want with transparent tape, ink with a Classic Stampin’ Pad, then remove the tape (very important!) and stamp. Or, you can do like I did and simply color the part you do want with a Stampin’ Write Marker. I used the Stamparatus, just in case I missed a bit of the word. That way, I could stamp again, if I needed to.

I punched the image with the Everyday Label Punch, then trimmed the top and bottom for an oval label.

Happy birthday, Susan – and thanks for letting me steal your photo.

Thanks for stopping by Stamping with Buffy. Have a lovely day!