Happy Birthday Balloons – Two Ways!

I always like to have lots of birthday cards on hand for last minute giving and mailing (for both my own personal stash and my non crafty friends. I have a project to share today using a very cute birthday stamp from Simply Stamps.

I’m going to share two different ways to use the adorable Happy Birthday Balloons stamp. This is just two ways to use it.. I have more ideas running around in my head. I’ll save those for another post.

I started out by making a simple watercolor background. Lots of circles and splatters with green, blue, orange and a pretty dark pink. Don’t worry about being perfect with your circles. It’s all about random colors.

I then stamped my Happy Birthday Balloons stamp with black ink and mounted it onto a blue card. How pretty is that for a very simple card?

For my second version of this image I’ll step it up a bit and add another layer for the balloons and banner. I made a quick wash background with the same blue and green paints for the balloons as I used on the background. I wet my watercolor paper and let the two colors blend.

I stamped my Happy Birthday Balloons with black ink. I added a little shading to the balloons and highlights with a white gel pen and then used scissors to cut them out. I used a black marker on the edges after cutting.

Next I stamped the “birthday” banner onto white cardstock with black ink.

Here is a close up of the card after the cut out pieces were layered onto my card. This version is still very simple but adds a little more punch that the first version of the card. I liked how festive both of the cards turned out.