Happy Birthday, Dear Son!

Today is my son's 23rd birthday.  He is a treat at this age - grown and making his way in the world, finishing college (hopefully!) in May and potentially moving on without his dad and I in the daily life.  I'm so proud of who he is and what he has become I just had to make a card for his birthday, special to the season and sweet so he knows his mama loves him.

This card was inspired by Kristina Warner's Multicolor stamping with Distress Oxide inks.  I used my Hero Arts September 2016 monthly card kit stamp set and Mama Elephant's Birthday Wishes sentiment stamp in white heat embossing.

I have a few fall birthday's so I made a couple extra cards as well.  I'm so pleased with how these cards turned out.  I'm going to enter this card in the Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge Simon Says Fall/Autumn.

A Golden Birthday Card

We've had a wonderful week on vacation - enjoying Hawaii and island life.  I'm thinking of trying to share some photos of our trip.  Stay tuned.

I had some time to edit photos and decided to use the WiFi to write this post.  My grandmother needed a birthday card for my cousin's kid whose 10th birthday is his golden birthday - meaning he was born on the 10th of June and he will be 10.  I had to whip this card up before I left.



I used my Gansi Tambi Starry Colors watercolors on Strathmore watercolor paper to create the background and my Mama Elephant Birthday Wishes sentiment stamp to keep it simple.  It's for a 10 year old boy - that magic age when grown ups can't possibly be cool enough but the kid is still a kid...   I think the card turned out just as I planned and so is a perfect match for the occasion.  My grandma was pleased for the help.

A Happy Set of Birthday Cards

 I decided to put my Mama Elephant Birthday Wishes stamp set to work.  I started with white embossing the sentiment onto watercolor paper.  Occasionally,  the white wasn't super solid, so I poured additional powder over the still hot embossed sentiment and used my heat tool to melt a little more powder, creating a slightly more solid image.  I've found this technique to solve some of the ills of embossing on watercolor paper with the variable texture.   I then used my Mission Gold watercolors to create the watercolor washes, combining colors which complimented each other.  I ended up experimenting on multiple pieces and so this card set was born.   Once I had the washes completely dry, I used think watercolor to splatter and create the interesting detail on the card front.

I went looking for something to finish these off and decided to use my Cosmic Shimmer gold gilding flakes.  Using a technique similar to that found in this video, I sponged glue onto the panel edge and let the glue dry a bit before rubbing the flakes into the glue as demonstrated in the video.

Each panel was then backed with coordinating colored cardstock  and mounted onto a white card base.  I'm super pleased with how these turned out, so much so that I used one for my husband's birthday card.  Just so he knows I love him!

What have you been up to?   I don't know if I'll stop this watercolor kick I'm on.  It's been too much fun!