Hi, crafty friends. Popping by today with a fun birthday card featuring a couple of cuties from the newest A Special Day release from Purple Onion Designs, illustrated by Stacey Yacula.

I really wanted to create a birthday card with Bugsy (what a great name for a bunny, btw) and Jessie. They’re on their way to a birthday party and I stamped them using Extreme Black ink from My Favorite Things, making sure to stamp Bugsy in a way that made part of the balloon hang off the edge of the panel, creating the illusion that the scene extends beyond the card to other partygoers and the birthday boy or girl. I did a teeny tiny masking on top of the balloon to stamp the Tree Line stamp from a previous release using Fadeout ink from Inkon3 for a soft no line look on the horizon.

I colored in my scene using Copics. I started with the sky (I don’t even remember what color I used there, sorry), before coloring the trees, the ground, then the critters. I struggled with my colors on this one. I wanted the trees to be a muted green way back in the distance, but the colors I used felt too gray, so I added a couple of more vibrant greens to make them come alive a little bit more.

I managed to make the same mistake with the ground. I originally wanted a muted green, because most of the green backgrounds I’ve colored using stamps from this release have been very vibrant. As it turns out, I’m not as big a fan of the muted green look when it’s down on paper as opposed to what I envision in my head before I start. I was originally only going to use three green markers for the ground, I ended up with eight, and I’m still not entirely happy with it. It’s messier than what I’m used to, and I struggled with the blending.

I used the largest die from the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 1 set from My Favorite Things to turn my colored panel into one with a nice faux stitch edge, and adhered it to a top fold A2 card base I created from Stamper’s Select White cardstock from Papertrey Ink. I love the look of the faux stitch with that thin white border going around the edge. For my sentiment I die cut the Happy Birthday Brush Script die from Simon Says Stamp four times from white cardstock and glued them together for a stacked, dimensional look, and I had just the right spot to adhere it to the card.

At that point I thought the card was a little plain and decided to add some “flowers” by drawing in white dots in a few clusters on the green grass. This adds a little bit of interest, but I still didn’t think it was enough, so I pulled out my Frosted Lace Stickles and added a thick layer to the balloon, before deciding to also add it to the die cut letters. This helped a little more, but I felt like I needed another element in the sky, it was still pretty plain. Using the Cloud 1 & 2 die set from Papertrey Ink, I die cut four small clouds from vellum. I glued two and two together and adhered them to the sky, which really helped pull the entire design together. This was an evolution of a card (I also colored the bird yellow to begin with, but decided I wanted it red and colored red over the yellow), but it came together in the end.

I used quite a few Copics for this one. I have a feeling I may have used B00 for the sky, but I’m not entirely sure.

Today is the last day for the 30% discount off the entire A Special Day release bundle, and also the last day to get 10% off the individual stamps in this release, so if you want them and have been on the fence, now is the time to get them and save.