Belated Birthday for Long-Time Friend

A long-time and good friend of mine had a birthday early in May.  With all of the doings down here during my visit to my Mom's in California, I am late with everything.  I do have to give myself credit for at least getting the three celebrations in my brother's household off to them in a timely manner:  my brother's birthday, his wife's birthday and their anniversary.  All of those celebrations happen within one week in early May.  

Unfortunately, my friend's birthday got missed and is now belated.  You might have experience what happens then. . .it is difficult to find sentiments and verses that fit a belated birthday (or at least, ones that I am happy with).  Not to give up though, as one day while my mother was gone taking care of appointments and errands, I went through her stash of birthday stamps and verses from Papertrey Ink that she had added since my last trip down to visit.  Yeah, she had several that I really liked.

Now for my friend's card. . .I took a partially completed card from a stamping event with my favorite cardmaking hostess, Liz Thayer.  I had not finished this partcular card because it had some off-stamping along the edge of the sentiment layer.  I was very disappointed to find that I could not perform this particular technique with my new MISTI stamping tool (Most Incredible Stamping Tool Invented) that I had brought along to try out.  Me being me, I was determined to find a way to do this so I set the card aside to finish later.

Several months later, I was introduced to a Maureen Wong YouTube video by a fellow-cardmaking friend who had been using a MISTI for quite a while.  In this video, Maureen demonstrates a technique to make the MISTI more versatile.  She uses 8-1/2" x 11" grid printed acrylic sheets used to make templates for quilting patterns.  Maureen cuts an acrylic sheet into different width strips, which become new bumper corners for use in the middle of your MISTI pad.  This allows over-stamping where parts of a stamp are stamped along an edge of your paper and the rest of the stamp hangs beyond your paper edge.  She recommends using a piece of scrap paper to "catch" any stamping ink on the "overhanging" part of the stamp.  When using the MISTI in the traditional manner that overhanging stamp hits the MISTI's ruler edge and does not allow its top "door" to close; thus the stamp can not reach your paper to ink the stamp's image onto it.  Here is a link to Maureen's YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95OldeznYdY.

I loved this card's design just as Liz presented it for us to re-create.  I did make a few minor changes, such as the sentiment, which I changed to a belated birthday greeting.  I used Stampin' Up ink and an Aqua Painter to color my flowers and leaves rather than a Blender Pen with markers.  I also added soft gold rhinestones and Wink of Stella-clear to add a little sheen to my flower petals.  Unfortunately, the picture does now show this detail to any degree.  Below is my friend's card showing my successful use of my MISTI to off-stamp my flowers and leaves along the paper edge. 

My last task was to design a complimentary inside where I used one of those sentiment and birthday verses I found in my Mom's stash.

Recipe:  SU products:  Cardstock--Old Olive, Elegant Eggplant, Whisper White.  Pattern--Wildflower Fields (2016 SAB).  Stamp--Grateful Bunch.  Ink:  Memento--Black Tuxedo; Elegant Eggplant, Wisteria Wonder, Old Olive, Pear Pizzazz.  Punch--Blossoms; Curvy Corners.  3/8" Crumb Cake Stitched Satin Ribbon.  Metallic Gold Cord.  Wink of Stella-Clear.  Stash: Gold Rhinestones.  Fiskars stamps:  Make A Wish.  Papertrey Ink stamps: Birthday Basics, Inside & Out: Birthdays.  Size:  4-3/8" x 5-5/8".