A Bear and Some Birthday Balloons

 Anyone else struggle with making birthday cards?   I have some time to craft this Holiday weekend and when I saw that the current Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge theme is Party Time, I decided it was good time to try and crank out some birthday cards.   I'm always on the hunt for some stamp set that inspire me to create a birthday card and when Penny Black came out with the adorable Together Forever stamp set, I had to have it.   

I first created the sky background by stamping weathered wood and tumbled glass distress inks onto my craft mat.  I spritzed with water and then dragged the card stock through it.   I colored the image with copics and fussy cut the bear and balloons.   I wanted to pop up a couple of balloons so I stamped again and cut those out and popped them up with foam adhesive.  I added some Glossy Accents to the balloons. I layer ed the balloons just outside the panel so the bear and his balloons could be floating up outside the panel.  I stamped a sentiment from the Papertrey Ink Just Sentiments: Birthday stamp set and heat embossed another sentiment from the Altenew Sentiment Strips 3 stamp set.  I matted the image pane in back and layered it over the confetti pane that I created using the cool Concord and 9th Celebrations Turnabout stamp set. 

Blue Floral Birthday

Playing along with the Simon Says Stamp Challenge Blog and the theme is "Party Time."   You can enter up to 5 times.   Challenge accepted for a chance to win a $25 gift card  Here is my first entry.  

Found a few of my old MFT background stamps which inspired me to make this card.  

I rubbed some weathered wood, tumbled glass, and old paper distress inks onto my craft mat.  I spritzed with water and dragged the card stock through it.  I dried it with a heating tool and repeated that a couple of times.  

Next I used an old MFT Sheet Music background stamp that sadly is no longer available.  I stamped that in black soot distress ink.  

Next I stamped the Simon Says Stamp Beautiful Flowers stamp set in Momento Tuxedo Black ink and colored the image with Arteza Real Brush Pens.

I heat embossed the sentiment onto some vellum with  some black embossing powder so it didn't get lost in the design.