IO Design Team Challenge

Today is a special design team challenge because it is in honor of Mitra's birthday! Mitra is the owner of Impression Obsession and has graciously allowed me be to be a part of her design team. As a thank you, many of us are posting birthday cards to help her celebrate her special day. I am posting a card using the circle elements set I recently received. I was chomping at the bit to play with these images!

The set comes with all kinds of circles, but I decided I wanted to use one that didn't come in the set. What is a crafter to do? Improvise of course! I wanted a larger scallop image for the outside ring of the birthday circle, so I flipped the scallop stamp over and used the backside as a stamp. I essentially made my own shadow stamp. Confused? Here are some photos to help explain:


This is the back/flat side of my scallop stamp. I inked it up with a medium pink pigment ink. The front-side of the stamp is holding the stamp to the acrylic block.


This is what it looked like when I stamped the ring onto some white cardstock. I didn't take a very good picture of this step because the ring looks dark. Trust me, you will see later on that it is the lighter pink of the two inks I used. I cleaned my stamp really well and then reattached it to my acrylic block so that it was then face-side up.

I inked the face of the stamp with a dark pink pigment ink and then stamped it on top of my lighter pink scallop.

This is the result I got. I could have left it as-is, but I decided I wanted to cut it out. I could have gotten similar results by stamping the scallop shadow, cutting it out, and edging it with a dark pink pen. However, I am HORRIBLE at edging scallops, and this worked better for me. Try this technique out with your clear stamps. It is a lot of fun! Another way I took advantage of using clear stamps was with the "happy birthday" sentiment. The saying comes as a horizontal stamp. I decided I wanted to place the "happy" on top of the "birthday," so I cut my stamp in half. Now I can place the words wherever I want. You can't do that with a wood mount stamp!

To finish the card, I stamped some of the stitched circles onto some pink spotted paper (had to continue the circle theme). I added a ribbon and then popped my birthday circle up with some pop dots.

If you want other birthday card ideas (and who doesn't), check out the cards made by Daniela, Deborah, Julie, Kelli, Tina and Penny.

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering about my anniversary blog candy, the winner is....
Jennifer! Jennifer posted a comment that was chosen by the integer generator at random.org. Here is her winning post:

Jennifer said...

Happy Anniversary Laura. Look forward to many more years of reading your blog.

May 14, 2008 8:28 AM

Please email me Jennifer, and I will get your goodies to you.

I also awarded a prize to a randomly chosen subscriber to my blog. I am emailing her directly. I don't know her name, and I thought it would be poor form to post her email address on my blog!