After seeing the sketch for this month’s challenge over at STAMPlorations, I decided to join in.

I began by cutting out a ‘mask’ from printer paper to isolate my stamping to a certain area. I then taped a piece of 300gsm water colour paper to the mask.

Using Gorgeous Grunge and Timeless Textures (both from Stampin’ Up!), I stamped all over the open area with a variety of inks – all water based.

Once I was happy with my random stamping, I water spritzed the whole area and let the colour spread a bit, then dried it with a heat gun.

I then restamped the ‘flourish’ from Timeless Textures using Peacock Feathers, so it stood out.

After all that, I felt the outside was a bit bare, so did some stamping with the dots from Gorgeous Grunge around the outside.

Then I cut out “Happy Birthday” (Spellbinders – Sentiments Three) in two colours: black, and also the cardbase colour, which is Pistachio Pudding (SU). I then cut off the ‘happy’ part and used only the remainder. I put the Pistachio Pudding colour on top, slightly offsetting it from the black to give a nice shadow. (It would have blended into the background otherwise.)

The cake, which is popped up with dimensionals, is from SU’s Big Day set, and ‘wishes’ is from SU’s Happiest Birthday Wishes. In this instance, I isolated the word Wishes, as that’s all I needed.

Thanks for looking, and as always, if you want to comment, and the comment box isn’t showing, click the title of this post and it will magically appear!