Happy Birthday Mum Card – Mostly Altenew, Watercolouring, Heat Embossed Dies etc

Happy Birthday Mum!  This card is for you!  But then you already know that since you got it handed to you in person this morning lol.  So today is me dear old mum’s birthday and obviously I know that it’s coming up and I know that I have to make a card for her, and yet, somehow I was still finishing it off this morning haha.  It’s so strange and also so frustrating when this happens and I’m sure I can’t be the only one that it happens too either, right?

So obviously I am aware that her birthday was getting closer and I was also giving it a lot of thought in the background while I got on with other things, so it was always on my mind, just in the back … What kind of card am I going to make for her? What am I going to use?  What colours? Is there anything I need to order?  Have I run out of anything important? She likes cats, and she likes flowers so which way do I go this time?  All those kind of thoughts were being processed in my head, and then we have a long Bank Holiday weekend and I think – Brilliant!  Just what I need to get stuck into this card for real.  Except that, instead I decide to upgrade my websites and spend the weekend doing fun things like digital housekeeping.  It’s necessary, but really did I have to do it then?  Especially as is always the way, it never runs smoothly and ends up taking up most of the weekend.  OK so there is still Monday AND Tuesday.  Nope that didn’t really work out either <insert manic laughter here>, and that brings us to last night (now too late to post the card so I’m down to hand delivery).

What am I going to make?  No idea.  All those ideas that were flowing through my brain have vanished.  I pull out Sweetest Peas stamp set, decide to use it, do something with diecutting… except I don’t actually have the dies, huh thought I did.  OK, pull out Beautiful Day stamp set, same thing, no dies!    I pull out this piece I did a few weeks ago and wonder if I can make it work…

Colour – yes, flowers -yes, space for sentiment – hmm not great.  Decide to stamp out and heat emboss a few more of these, paint them, fussy cut them, and still not feeling it.  Abandon that idea. Back to Beautiful Day, last year, when I got my Altenew Watercolors, I stamped out and painted this

I don’t really know what I had planned for it but I did it and then I left it on my display shelves where I’ve been able to look at it for nearly a year.  It’s A4 size, what on earth was I thinking?  I toy with the idea of fussy cutting these already stamped and coloured flowers but my hand hates me right now, but I do it anyway, and besides maybe while I’m doing that, something else will pop into my head.

So you know how these flowers used to be much lighter and much pinker?  Yeah well they’re not now.  I repainted them with shades of purple and darker pink, and the leaves darker green to better match something that I didn’t use in the end but hey ho.  I was getting there albeit slowly.

Something like this maybe?  This Distress Oxide background from a few weeks ago

Or this one with more rainbow colours perhaps? I really like how these pieces look together but I know my mum wouldn’t like the orange lol

Here’s what I know:

1. I like the Dusk ink blended backgrounds on the sweet peas
2. I like these Beautiful Day flowers but the colour is wrong
3. I like this aqua coloured heat embossed Leaf Frame Cover die piece that I had done last week (can’t find photo)
4. I REALLY NEED A CARD ASAP

The flowers were still not working for me even with the repainting so I got out my Polychromos and started colouring them in – haha madness – and then going over it all with gamsol.  Actually surprisingly effective!  I did the same to the leaves.  I painted a new background with Dusk watercolour.  Because it was now VERY late, I decided to do things that I could leave to dry overnight so I gave the background another coat of Dusk, I went over the flower centres with black Nuvo Drops and a Copic multiiner, then went round the edges of everything with a Memento marker before covering them with Wink of Stella.

*Some time later… *

OK so this morning, I am up bright and early – LET’S DO THIS! – giving myself a pep talk haha.

Here’s what we are aiming for.  I swapped out the aqua embossed frame with this one in Fool’s Gold embossing.  What’s interesting about this is that I cut this frame out of a scrap piece of card a few weeks ago, so there are actually bits missing, but I thought I could use up the card and experiment with it so I had heat embossed it in this lovely Fool’s Gold colour, which is kinda like rose gold-ish but paler.  So if you look at the bottom of the frame you can see the whole outer edge is missing, but that doesn’t matter if I cover it up with flowers and leaves anyway 🙂  I had also cut a few bits off which I quickly had to reassemble and glue on again but again, you can’t see it, so it’s all good.

Here’s a clearer idea of what is missing from that frame.  I also made a card base from a whole sheet of Neenah 110lb (I like big cards!) and did some heat embossing around the edge.  I rounded the corners on the blue piece and then it was ready to be put together.

The “Happy” diecut used to be silver, but I heat embossed it again to match.  It’s been sitting around since I did all that heat embossing at the beginning of the month – I knew it would come in handy for something!  I also used a Happy Birthday sentiment from the Altenew Birthday Greetings stamp set and heat embossed that too.  I’m wondering how many times I can write heat embossed in one post lol. I curled and shaped the flowers and leaves with my hands just to give some extra dimension and we’re done.

Because the card was so large, I usually have to make my own envelopes, but because of the extra dimension and because I was running late, I just used this A5 envelope and it fitted with a bit of room to spare.  Shoutout to the cat hair in the bottom right of this photo lol.

And because I needed a bag…

I used my favourite bold alpha dies to quickly cut out a Happy Birthday from this watercolour piece I had in my stash, and stuck it on the white bag – job done and I’m out of here!

PROJECT RECIPE:
Beautiful Day Stamp Set – Altenew
Leaf Frame Cover Die – Altenew
Happy Word Die – Altenew
Birthday Greetings stamp – Altenew
Watercolor 36 pan set – Altenew
Fools Gold embossing powder – Wow
Hot press watercolour paper
Neenah 110lb solar white cardstock
Nuvo Drops – black
Wink of stella
Memento Tuxedo Black marker
Copic Multiliner
Faber-Castell Polychromos
Gamsol
Versamark Ink Pad
Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive
Tim Holtz Stamp Platform