Happy Birthday!

This one was a struggle . . .

 . . . the background was too shrieky so I hauled out the vellum to tone things down.  Not the effect I was after, but I kept slogging along anyway.  The jute flower embellishment was an idea that popped into my head when I got out of bed this morning.  Have absolutely no idea what jarred that one loose, but I like it, so I'll be doing a few of these again.

My favorite part was experimenting with an idea I heard from a few other stampers out there:  I found that it's possible to get some real color on dark cardstock by painting the area first with a wet brush stroked onto my white pigment ink pad.  I heat dried, and then used colored pencils over the white ink.  As they were water color pencils, I smoothed out the color with my trusty water brush.  I'll be playing with this idea a lot!

Overall, there are elements on this card that work, and others that assuredly do not. Sigh . . . such is life . . .    

Cardstock:   PaperCut Brown Umber, Stampin’ Up Vellum, Generic

                           Orange scrap

Stamps:        Stamp La Jolla Satin Flower Square, Stampendous

                          Montage Birthday

Inks:               ColorBox Frost White, Memories Art Print Brown

Emb Powder:   Judikins Opaque White

Colored Pencil:  Inktense Tangerine

Dies:              ScrapMart Bubble Label

Emb Folder: Cuttlebug Divine Swirl       

Doo Dads:    American Crafts Orange Jute, deckled scissors