It’s Your Birthday!

Happy Friday! Today I have a card to share with you featuring an embossing paste technique that I came up with as I was brainstorming how I wanted to design the background for this card.

When planning how I wanted to incorporate a subtle background into this card, I thought about embossing paste. And when thinking about how I would use the embossing paste, I thought it would be fun to mix it with some glitter and create a shimmering background… going with my idea, I quickly pulled together my supplies; a piece of cardstock, some Wendy Vecchi translucent embossing paste and some fine glitter from Martha Stewart Crafts.

On a non-stick sheet, I mixed together some paste and glitter with a palette knife. The ratio of paste to glitter is all personal preference; if you want more shimmer, use more glitter than paste…  less shimmer, use more paste than glitter. For this background I used more glitter than paste, but I will soon be sharing another card using the more paste-less glitter ratio, so be sure to stop back! :)

Once my paste was mixed to the consistency I liked, I applied it over a Heidi Swapp stencil and set it aside to dry.

Meanwhile, I stamped a flower from the Mama Elephant Freestyle Florals stamp set, three times onto white cardstock. I then masked off each flower and stamped some of the leaves as well, which are also included in the set. Finally, I stamped the smallest leaf image three more times on a separate piece of cardstock. I colored all my images in with Copic markers (B00, BG01 and BG93 for the flowers, and YG11, G21 and YG67 for the leaves). Once everything was colored, I fussy cut everything out and adhered them to my glittered background.

I stamped my sentiment onto some vellum using the Altenew Birthday Greetings stamp set, and filled in the letters with a black pen. I then attached the vellum strip to my panel, and layered the glittered panel to a piece of black cardstock and my card base.

For a couple final touches, I added some Wink of Stella glitter to the flowers and leaves, and also applied some black Ranger Enamel Accents to the background and my vellum sentiment strip.

I really love how the background of this card turned out! The shimmer is beautiful in real life… and a funny thing happened that night… turning out the lights at my craft desk, I noticed my card was “glowing”. Soon I figured out that not only was the Martha Stewart glitter a super fine, brilliant glitter, but it was glowing glitter! LOL! It actually looks quite amazing, seeing the silhouette of the flowers against the glowing background pattern!

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed, and thanks so much for stopping by!  :)

Challenges

This card is submitted into the Seize the Birthday “Make Your Own Background” challenge, the Freshly Made Sketches challenge #184,  the Simon Says Stamp “Anything Goes” Monday challenge and the Mama Elephant May Flickr challenge.

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