Happy Birthday!

Hello!

First of all, a little excitement here in my little patch of the world.  I received my first ever official recognition in a challenge! Woo hoo! I received an Honorable Mention in the Top Picks for this card at Just Add Ink 75. Yay! And now on to the reason for my post. . .

Do you suffer from anxiety when you have to make a birthday card for your stamping friends?  I do!  And especially when it is a birthday card for the person who has taught me just about every techinque I know!  This is why last week-end I couldn't get anything much created. I had my ideas but they wouldn't translate to paper, and then the birthday crept closer and closer, so yesterday I bit the bullet and sat down to create.  And I'm pretty happy with the outcome, so happy that I made a second version for my sister's birthday tomorrow. And you know what? It takes 2 hours to make the first prototype, and 15 minutes to do the subsequent ones. . . why don't I make multiples more often? LOL!

I was using the delicious colour inspiration from Play Date Cafe Challenge 90:

Eggplant...Fuschia...Orangesicle



When I finished making the first card, I decided that I hadn't captured Fuschia in the equation, so my second attempt is the challenge entry:

This card is a Joy Fold card that I found in the Just Add Ink Fancy Folding Challenge a little while ago. I'm still working through the inspiration I found there, it was awesome! I took my instructions from Chantell (thanks for the clear instructions!) and more inspiration also from Susan, whose beautiful card surpasses mine totally, so I'll just have to keep working on improving this one!

It opens up like this:

And inside is:

My other card is this one:

Well, techniques used included bleach stamping (did you know that if you water down your bleach you get a different effect? common sense, but I discovered this along the way), thumping, rock'n'rolling, shimmer mist, colouring stamps with markers (or stamping spots when you don't have the marker!), and probably others I haven't listed, LOL! I think I tried to squeeze every technique into one card.

Colours used (which surprised the socks off me that they worked together): All SU - Pure Plum, Perfect Plum, More Mustard (pretending to be orangesicle here), Pink Passion (on the challenge entry for fuschia).

So, what do you think?

Michelle

xxx