Botanicals Happy Birthday Friend

Happy Friday! 🌞I am so enjoying getting back into making cards again! It's like Christmas!

This card is for a dear friend whose birthday is this month. I actually have two friends with September birthdays, and I'll share the other card once she has it in her possession.

I post my cards on this blog mainly to inspire MYSELF! 😄 But of course, I hope it inspires others, too! I learn cool techniques and then forget about them. So I often look at what I've done in the past to remind myself of them, to re-learn them, basically. Like stamping on cardstock with watermark ink and then embossing it. Such a cool look! I do that all the time, or used to anyway. But I had forgotten all about it until I started looking at my older cards for inspiration. 

Botanicals is one of the first stamp sets I bought from Stampin' Up! back in the early 2000's. All but the "Happy Birthday" stamp and the background stamp on the green paper are from the Botanicals set. It's a classic set that never grows old. 

One thing I love doing is dimensionalizing my cards. I am in love with foam tape! You can do such cool things with it. I must not be alone because while I was at Michael's the other day I saw a 12-inch wide roll of it! 

I'm not keen on sinking $21 into such a thing, but it made me happy to see that it comes in such vast quantities! I mean, look how cool that stuff is! You can pop out anything you like with it. 

My cards tend to not only be dimensional, but also textured, either visually or physically. It just thrills me to add texture or movement of some kind to my cards. 

On this one I popped out the poppy flower, bud, and pod. To add interest I put some Fruit Punch Stickles on the flowers and Peeled Paint Stickles on the leaves and pod. And I don't know why, but I get a thrill putting holes on my cards. Like the ones on the scalloped piece. They're not perfect. But I find that look more endearing than a perfectly-holed die that cuts them for you. Dies are expensive. My hole puncher is not. And I already own way too many dies as it is. Plus, punching holes is very Zen!

For the inside I used two inks to create a marbled effect on the saying, although I'm not sure it's visible in the picture. I inked the stamp with a lighter red, and then touched it here and there with a darker red. Then I breathed on it to moisten the ink and stamped it.  It gives a cool mottled effect. I used the Stamp-a-Ma-Jig to line up all the stamps inside the card. The bottom collage stamp was stamped twice to get a continuous look. It's not perfect, but it's tricky with such a stamp as this that has so many things to line up.

Well, that's about it! Thanks for coming by for a visit!

Recipe:

Stamps: SU Botanicals, SU Canvas, Savvy Stamps "Happy Birthday"

Papers: Prima Doodle Deux, Swirl Vellum, White, Black, Olive

Inks: Versamark embossing ink, Memento Tuxedo Black, Tim Holtz Black Soot Distress Ink, Papertrey Ink Pure Poppy, Tim Holtz Distressed Ink Abandoned Coral

Copics: 110, R30, R32, R35, YG95

Other: Cuttlebug Argyle embossing folder, Nestabilities Classic Oval Scallops - Large, Classic Ovals - Small, SU Scallop Trim Border punch, large oval punch, small oval punch, black gingham ribbon, Stamp-a-Ma-Jig, hole puncher, foam tape, Stickles (Fruit Punch, Peeled Paint)