Chalkboard Birthday

It's been two weeks since I've had a chance to sit down and make a card (my design team card posted the other day was made some weeks ago), but it's my DH's 50th birthday tomorrow (yes, Christmas Eve!) so I thought I'd better make the time to produce a card for him.

A few days ago, I saw the coolest cards on Becky Roberts blog and knew I had to try it for myself using a birthday theme.

There are so many stray embossing specks on this card that under other circumstances, I wouldn't blog it and wouldn't gift it, but I'm fast running out of time.  So we'll just pretend the specks are meant to be there right? LOL.

For all that, this was a fun card to make and without a doubt I used more stamp sets on this card than any I've made before.  I hope Pete likes it.  I started out thinking I could put all my stamps on the biggest clear block and stamp in one hit, but it left big gaps between each image so I had to resort to the single image system.  For each image, I stamped onto my Stamp-a-majig image sheet using Crumb Cake ink, then cleaned the stamp, swiped the cardstock with my embossing buddy and re-stamped using Versarmark.  I heat embossed each image before moving onto the next one.

Once all the images were stamped, I inked up a tissue with Whisper White ink and rubbed it onto different parts of the card.  I then went around the outside with a whitepencil and rule.

Wanna hear something really bad?  Five of these images had to be mounted before I could use them - and all five are retired sets...!!

I'm entering this in this week's Friday Mashup challenge, which is to use heat embossing (big tick!) or a CAS card and I suppose this qualifies although it was anything but clean and simple to produce!

Thanks for looking.

Products used (all Stampin' Up!):

Stamps:  Best Friends Forever; Happiest Birthday Wishes; So Happy for You; Well Scripted; Bring on the Cake; Outlined Occasions; Word Play; Patterned Party; Candy Conversations

Cardstock:  Basic Black; Whisper White

Ink:  Versamark; Whisper White

Accessories:  White EP; White Pencil

Cheers

Karren