High Flyin' Birthday!

This week I played along with the color challenge on SCS (CC147) - Taken with Teal, Real Red and Certainly Celery! I think this is a super fun combo! You're probably thinking this is meant to be a kid's birthday card - but that's not actually the case! I made this one for a friend who loves to fly & has recently gotten his pilot's license! I remembered I had this old retired SU set called "Airplane" - I actually picked this one up for free when my upline's upline's upline had an event and put out a bin of stamps that she didn't want anymore (and all the demos present absolutely POUNCED on!) - it was actually a couple years ago, I was very pregnant with Carter at the time (so my sister Laura did the pouncing for me!) and we nabbed this set thinking it could be fun for future little boy scrapbook pages. Little did I know that two years would pass, no progress has been made in that theoretical scrapbook, and this set was opened up for the first time last night! Ah well, so much for good intentions! So back to the card... I knew I wanted to have the airplane pulling a "happy birthday" banner, but it wouldn't all fit on the card - so I opted for the size I've been loving a lot lately, 4x9", which fits perfectly in a business-sized envelope. You can't really tell in the photo, but I used my new red Spica glitter pen (*I'm in love!*) to color in the stars, and I put diamond glaze on the black wheel and propeller. It turns out the diamond glaze wasn't a great idea - I had stamped the image by coloring the stamp with SU markers, huffing & stamping - the black marker ended up smearing when I put diamond glaze on it! Boo! But it wasn't the end of the world, it didn't mess it up TOO much. Maybe you wouldn't have noticed if I had kept my trap shut about it! :-) The row of stars along the bottom are old retired SU eyelets that I've had kicking around for a while, never even opened! Geesh. This seems to be a trend with me!

Notice anything else interesting about this card? Actually you probably don't, because it's small, especially on this larger-sized card... but in the lower right is my new watermark! I created it myself (which is probably obvious!) with help from Kurtis (aka Stampin' Kub) - he has a super helpful video tutorial on his blog!!! I had no idea how to do this in Elements, so I really appreciate Kurtis taking the time to share his excellent tutorial with his readers!!!! Eventually I may play around a bit more and find a font that's truly *me*, but for now this one makes me VERY happy! :-) (especially since I did it myself... *patting myself on the back*)

Thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: Airplane, All Holidays
• Paper: Certainly Celery, Taken with Teal, Real Red (textured), Whisper White
• Ink: Black StazOn & SU Markers (Teal, Red, Black)
• Accessories: Paper Piercer, old SU star eyelets, embroidery floss, diamond glaze, red Spica glitter pen