Gray, yellow, pink

I wanted to give the Play Date Cafe Challenge as I found the color combination interesting.  I ended up making two cards slightly different.  I actually made about 5 of the Thanks panels before I decided on these two.  Sometimes it hard to only use what's in my, ever growing, stash.  I'm still not 100% satisfied with the result, but I think they look better in person than in the picture.

I'm entering these in the following challenges:
The Play Date Cafe #106
Midnight Madness Sketch Challenge #128

Birthday Card

I've seen so many pretty easel cards and decided that I needed to give one a try.  It was a friend's Birthday so I thought this was the perfect time to make something a little fancier.  

The starting point was that I wanted it to include orange.  I picked the orange background paper first and then worked around that.  I wasn't sure what color I was going to go with for the card base. Black was too Halloween-ish, brown didn't seem festive enough and lighter colors just weren't right either.  Then I saw this blue shiny paper and knew I'd found a match.  I tried all kinds of new techniques on this card too.  I used a Spellbinder's die to make the card itself.  I really like the shaped card base.  I'm sure there will be more of these in  my future.  I also wanted to try making some colored paper using distress inks spritzed with water.  I'm sure this technique has a name, but I don't know what it is.  Anyway, that's how I made the paper that the Happy Birthday is stamped, then embossed on.  Then the card needed a bit of bling.  I won a prize pack at the Member's Event at Scrapbooker's Paradise.  Included in that, amongst lots of other goodies, was some glimmer mist.  I sprayed some on the flowers and I have to say I'm in love with glimmer mist!

So that's it for this card.  Lots of playing around and I think it turned out pretty well.  My friend liked it and that is all that mattered.

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:

Scrapbooker's Paradise  PPC #40 
Catch the Bug  Anything Goes