Happy birthday!

It's summer time, which means it's time for me to start working on replenishing my birthday card supply while we have a few months without birthdays.

Although I haven't been posting a ton, I've actually been spending a fair amount of time crafting, given how busy work has been.  One thing I've been doing is playing around with techniques and artsy things, since it doesn't really have to look perfect and usually it can be done in short spurts.  I've been buying some stencils, and playing around with using them with various things.  For this card, I used the 6x6 Swiss Dot stencil from Crafter's Workshop.  I also have the 12x12, in case I ever wanted bigger dots.  :)

I used my Distress Inks to make the background pattern- Peeled Paint, Peacock Feathers, Broken China, and Seedless Preserves.  Then I cut the balloon animal on my Cameo from a file I bought from SVG Cutting Files. For a little dimension, I used my Versapen on some of the back layers of the balloon animal.  I don't know about you, but I just don't have a ton of shades of purple cardstock laying around to try to match together.

I wanted the background to be on full display, so I just adhered the balloon animal directly on, and then stamped on a sentiment from the Stamps of Life (birthday4cookie set, if you were wondering).

I'm entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, Stencil It challenge.