The Wonder Found: Birthday Card Inspiration

I ordered Tim Holtz Illustrated Garden stamp set and it was screaming for me to make a birthday card. So here’s what I did...

I started with a small piece of water color paper. I dabbed some Old Paper, Gathered Twigs and Rusty Hinge inks onto my craft sheet, sprayed it with water and blotted it up with the water color paper.

I added more ink and more water to the craft sheet, blotted my paper into the inky water and dried it with my heat tool in between blottings.

I continued that until my paper was inked to my liking.

While my mat was inky, I took some Ground Espresso stain and dyed a piece of cheese cloth, again using my heat tool to dry off the cheese cloth when I had the desired color I wanted.

I cleaned up my inks and pulled out my MISTI.
Using the MISTI tool I was able to get a nice dark stamped image onto my piece of water color paper.

Because of the texture on the paper, it took a few rounds of stamping but the MISTI ensured I stamped in the same place every time.

I pulled a few shades of green and purple to color in the color. I dabbed Mowed Lawn, Forest Moss, Seedless Preserves and Dusty Concord onto an acrylic block.

I used a water pen to water color my stamped image.

I then ripped the flower image into a smaller piece and distressed the edges with Gathered Twigs and Vintage Photo inks and a mini blending tool.

Using the same technique as a above with the water color paper, I put shades of purple distress oxide inks on my craft sheet and sprayed some water on it to activate the “oxide” part of the ink and dried it to get the background layer for this card.

I took a scrap page of vintage sheet music, tore it into a rectangle shape, distressed the edges with Gathered Twigs and Vintage Photo ink.

I then layered everything together. Starting with my purple layer, I glued the dyed cheese cloth down, added the distressed sheet music, wrapped a piece of twine around the bottom knotting it to one side and added my flower image using some foam tape and lastly added my sentiment “Happy Birthday” with my old label maker punch gun.