Project 161: Vintage feel hot air balloon cards

I wanted to thank some of my colleagues who had been especially fantastic these past few weeks/months. Two guys in particular really went above and beyond to help out with a project and I think a little gesture like a personal card is perfect for these occasions.

I had been given a bit feature hot air balloon stamp from my parents as a gift and I thought it would be perfect if combined with steampunk papers for a masculine feeling card.

I stamped the image on white and then added the greeting to the banner - it's left blank on the stamp and comes with a few variants but the "you're the best" greeting that I put in there is actually from a separate collection. I love that it's blank and you can personalize it, great feature. I then went over the whole image with gold, orange and mustard inks to give it the distressed and textured feel. I was particularly heavy handed with the metalic gold to give it some intentional splotches.

The orange paper is Chronology and the plain orange border was punched with a Knock Outs border punch. I thought it added to the industrial feel without being too girly. The pattern on the paper fits the celebatory theme of the card I think.

Finally I added some gold bling in the corner to finish it off.

This second card was following the online stamp course I've been doing and I think my coloring lets it down but it is otherwise pretty cute! I stamped different hot air balloon shapes off of four individually cut cards. These stamps are from Little Claire - a previous splurge. Apologies the photo is blurry - I've taken it a dozen times and am too frustrated to try again!

I colored the different details using ProMarkers and then textured each of the squares using a mustard-colored ink.

There was a different greeting stamped but I spilled one drop of water and it smudged it beyond repair so I just decided to cover it with a big fancy peel off. All in all I'm pleased though I will be a bit more careful with coloring/water/image taking next time!