Tropical colored birthday card

While I love to make cards, I have difficulty making a card for a specific person. I prefer to keep a stash of handmade cards on hand and then select from that when a card occasion presents itself. When my daughter celebrated her 12th birthday two months ago, nothing in my collection quite suited her or seemed age appropriate. I also wanted an element of surprise. What to make?

Inspiration began with the color theme. When my daughter chose a paint color for her room last year, she selected a blazing lime green, which we accented with other strong citrus colors and turquoise blue. We call her room "Key West" because when you step into it, you've left the cozy sensibility of the rest of the house and entered a tropical zone. A budding graphic artist, she has a fondness for circles and incorporated them into her room and her art designs. I decided to follow her cue and do the same on her card.

I started with a sheet of watercolor paper. I stamped dotted circles in Versamark and heat-embossed them with clear embossing powder to create a resist. I then loaded a brush with blue and green acrylic paint and pulled the brush over the paper just once--no blending or go-overs because I wanted the white paper to peek through and add a visual spark and texture.

While my resist technique worked, it didn't have a strong graphic impact. Hmmm. What to do next? And what would be the focal point of the card?

I had a new stamp set from Stampin' Up that I had just purchased and had not used yet. I loved the mod flowers and thought my girl would too. They were also the perfect scale for the card. I selected a blue ink slightly darker than my blue paint and randomly stamped the flowers on the paper. I liked the effect, but it was subtle and the card would need something to give it some visual pop.

That's when I decided to re-ink my dotted circle stamp with black and create another layer. Now I was getting somewhere. I had planned to use the circular birthday stamp from Stampin Up as a design element but not as the card's focal point. However, I was now in love with my background paper and wanted it to have a starring, not a supporting, role in the card.

So I chose a lime green cardstock, heat-embossed the circular birthday greeting in black for maximum impact and texture and then punched it out with a circle punch. I framed it within a dot circle on my paper and glued it on. Voila! Well, not quite. I thought the card needed one more bit of visual interest and texture.

I tried layering a flower brad over the black flower but it didn't work. A rhinestone didn't suit the card's style or my daughter's taste. An orange brad was too jarring, a silver or blue brad too boring. The small yellow brad turned out to be just right. I cut the watercolor paper to size and mounted it on turquoise cardstock. The perfect card. My daughter adored it!

Comments

[Tera]

I love it too! Nice work mom!

[Chris]

I really like the black dotted circles. Very pretty, cheerful card. Sounds like your daughter loved it. :-)