My friend Pea (YT: whimsicalendeavors<\/a><\/span><\/span>) is asking folks to make a CAS card for her mother’s 80th birthday. \u00a0She said her mom, who is her hero, has always felt a little gypped because her birthday was in December so she wanted to make sure\u00a0she would be receiving handmade birthday cards would have nothing to do with Christmas and be all about her milestone birthday. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

<\/a>I used the\u00a0beautiful new-to-me “Hello Gorgeous” stamp set by Essentials by Ellen, that I thought would be perfect for a sophisticated CAS card with a little water coloring. I first\u00a0used VersaMark ink and Opaque Platinum Sprinkle N Sparkle extra fine embossing powder to\u00a0emboss the sentiment “Sparkle On” on the lower right corner and a few of the gem stamps clustered around the sentiment and one on the opposite upper left corner. The positioning of all these elements created a nice asymmetrical balance, and the platinum embossing gives a luxe metallic look.\u00a0For the inside I used\u00a0the “happy birthday” from the\u00a0“Well Scripted”\u00a0Stampin’ Up stamp set and another gem stamp and embossed those too.<\/p>\n

Then, because I had used regular card stock, rather than watercolor paper, I used the Prima “The Basics” watercolor pencils set to add some touches of color in each of the gems. If I had used watercolor paper, I might have used Tim Holtz Distress Markers for this bit, but I was afraid the stamping on the rougher watercolor paper would have come out uneven.<\/p>\n

When I finished all of this, I thought it looked too plain, so I channeled a little Julia Altermann<\/a><\/span><\/span> and added some sparkly dots with a Clear Star Sakura Gelly Roll pen. \u00a0Oh yes, I liked this much better. \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0I popped the whole card front up on double sided foam adhesive and added it to the card base, which was made with a shimmery Recollections pearlescent card stock.<\/p>\n

The following is a start to finish process video of creating this card:<\/p>\n