Hi, crafty friends. I have a super simple card to share today (I feel like I always say that), featuring this adorable turtle (based on the shape of the shell, I’d say it’s a tortoise and not a turtle, but that’s just because I like being as accurate as I can) from the Turtley Awesome stamp set from Streamside Studios.

I colored in the image using Copics, before fussy cutting it, right up against the black lines of the image. I put the image aside while I worked on the rest of my card.

I actually worked directly on the card base for this one. Using the Big Balloon stencil from My Favorite Things, I ink blended two balloons using Distress inks – one using Picked Raspberry, Worn Lipstick and Abandoned Coral; the other using Mustard Seed and Squeezed Lemonade. And in the words of Laura Bassen – the magic’s in the overlap.

Once the balloons were done, I used the mask in the Big Balloon stencil set to mask off the balloons while I used the Slimline Cloud Edges stencil, also from MFT, to create the illusion of clouds in the distance. I used Eastern Sky ink near the top of the card, Iceberg ink towards the bottom, both are gorgeous colors from Altenew.

I free hand cut a grassy hill from Parsley cardstock from Concord & 9th and adhered it to the bottom of my card. I die cut the Happy Birthday die from My Favorite Things twice using white cardstock from Papertrey Ink (same cardstock as my card base) and adhered the two layers together for a tiny bit of dimension and adhered my layered die cut on top of the balloons.

To finish off the card, I drew in balloon strings using a 0.35 Copic Multiliner, popped the tortoise (I can’t bring myself to write the word “turtle” when this is clearly a tortoise) up using some 1/16″ foam squares and added sequins from the White Orchid sequin mix from Little Things From Lucy’s Cards for a bit of sparkle and shine.

Simple color palette for this small image.