Happy Birthday Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge is celebrating 8 years! Congrats on 8 years of inspiration and challenges.  Thanks too to Heidi at Simon Says Stamp for sending vouchers for the store to the winners.

This week they are giving away 8, yes 8, vouchers away to 8 lucky challenge entries.  Boy, oh boy, do I want one of those vouchers to help with my massive wishlist at Simon Says Stamp! Unfortunately, I have only been able to create 2 entries for this challenge; sometimes life just gets in the way of craft time!

This entry is a birthday card for my niece.  Her birthday isn't for another couple of weeks so I hope she doesn't read my blog! When I set out to make this card I thought it would come together very easily.  Once again it felt like a struggle trying to put this together! I persevered with it and I am so glad I did!

To get the two-toned colour for the background stamp I actually stamped it first in Archival Black on another project, cleaned the stamp with baby wipes, then stamped the card base with the gorgeous Simon Says Stamp hybrid coral ink.  Actually, I discovered this 'technique' by accident, not realising the black residue would still stamp after cleaning!

I just love the Coral Reef hybrid ink by Simon Says Stamp and I felt like I needed to do another card with this pretty colour.  For this challenge I added just a pop of mint to the mix as I love the two colours together with black as an accent (the paper looks pale blue in the picture but in real life it is mint). Hence, I am adding this card to the Southern Girls Challenge: Show us you Favourite Colour Combo challenge.

The frame for this card was actually white which was too stark for the overall card.  I toned down the white by adding some Zig fawn colour ink with a waterbrush to grunge it up a bit.

A lot of older items from my stash were used on my card! Yay for using up my stash.  After making this card I have popped the background stamp in my 'For Sale' pile for a de-stash event I am attending in a few weeks.  Hopefully I will make a little money to buy new supplies with!

I am entering this card in the following challenges:
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Happy Birthday
A Blog Named Hero: Anything Goes
Southern Girls Challenge: Show us your Favourite Colour Combo I'm having trouble linking this project to this challenge today.  I will try again later.

Materials:
Stamp: Hero Arts, Stampin' Up! (background)
Ink,  Simon Says Stamp hybrid Coral Reef, Ranger Archival Ink Black (for edging), Zig (on frame)
Numbers: American Craft Thickers
Frame: Maggie Holmes
Markers:   (for watercolouring the white frame to match)
Papers: Webster pages (journal card), La-De-Dah (paper used inside the frame), Grace Taylor (tag behind the frame),
Other: card