Happy Birthday Plain & Simple and A Way With Words

Hello and Happy Wednesday to you!!!  It's Wanda here today and I love making fall themed cards and even better if I need one for a birthday.  Quietfire Design has lots of wonderful choices for birthdays and I've chosen the stamp set Happy Birthday Plain & Simple and the fabulous Happy Birthday die for this card!!

For the leaf I've used the Tim Holtz layered leaf die and embossing folder set.  I smooshed Distress Ink (mostly barn door and carved pumpkin with just a little ground espresso and picked raspberry) onto my craft sheet, sprayed them with water and dragged a piece of white cardstock through the ink.  Dried it, pressed it straight down into left over ink and dried it again.  I die cut the leaf, embossed it, and then inked over the embossing and also the edges with vintage photo. 

For the background I again did smooshing with Distress Inks, mustard seed and wild honey, and dried it.  I used 5 of the 7 stamps from the Happy Birthday set putting them all onto an acrylic block and stamped with vintage photo ink.  It was easy to continue stamping so I got a pleasing arrangement of words in my background.  I used a waterbrush and barn door ink for the speckles in the background.  With the wet brush I picked up ink from the craft sheet and tapped the brush against my finger to cause the ink to splatter out.  Because it's a waterbrush, as you are tapping the brush against your finger more water goes to the tip and you get both darker speckles and lighter speckles.  The edges are inked with vintage photo and carved pumpkin.  A black pen was used to doodle lines around the edges.   

Happy Birthday was die cut twice from white cardstock backed with double sided adhesive and once from a beige velvet adhesive sheet (Elizabeth Craft Designs).  These were stacked together with the velvet on top and then I sprayed it with Distress Stain ground espresso to get a deep rich brown color.  A white gel pen was used to add some dots along the left side of the "H" and the "B".  

Everything is assembled as shown and adhered to a white folded card.  Finished size is 5 1/4" x 6 1/2". 

Being Thankful

It's Wanda here today on this beautiful Wednesday!!  There is much to be thankful for and Suzanne's stamp set, Being Thankful, has some very important ones.  I have combined stamps from that set along with the beautiful Thanks die to make this card. 

I lined up all the stamps from the Being Thankful set that I wanted to use on an acrylic block and stamped them onto vellum using Archival Ink jet black.  After drying the ink, I tore the vellum into a square around the words and inked the edges with Distress Ink mowed lawn.  

The next layer is a sampler pack size piece of gold shimmer sheetz from the metallic pack.  I inked over the piece with Alcohol inks (sunset orange, rust, raisin), embossed it with the curvy leaves ECD embossing folder, sanded it, inked the edges with Archival Ink jet black and heated the edges lightly allowing the shimmer sheetz to curl a bit.  The piece of stamped vellum is attached to the shimmer sheetz using a tiny attacher just along the top edge and the rest is left lose.  

For the next layer I used the curvy leaves embossing folder as a stamp.  I inked the side of the folder with the raised leaves using Distress Ink (wild honey, barn door, spiced marmalade), lightly misted over it with water and then pressed it onto white cardstock.  I repeated this to fill the cardstock and dried it.  The edges are inked with Distress Ink mowed lawn.  

Thanks is die cut from a black velvet adhesive sheet, attached directly onto the background as shown, and the shimmer sheets piece is attached with foam tape.  Everything is attached to a folded rust colored card and then I added some black dots using a Glaze pen.  The finished card measures 6 1/8" x 5 1/2".