Heart-y Balloon Birthday

I made a large batch of these cards for the February birthday card ministry at our church. The coordinator had a number of cards left over from January, so I didn’t have to rush to have cards ready at the very beginning of the month. I do appreciate having that buffer so I don’t have to rush! I used some retired patterned paper for the strip on the left side and a stamp from another company for the balloons. I also pulled out the retired Layering Ovals dies for the greeting. I love feeling thrifty by using retired patterned paper for these cards. It allows me to dig into my burgeoning stash and get some of it on cards for people who really appreciate them. It’s delightful!

This picture is to highlight something that happened with the balloon image on these cards. You can see that some of the outline of the balloons lost their crisp lines; it’s especially obvious on the left edge of the yellow balloon and the top of the blue balloon on the left. I made my sample card (the top picture) and this didn’t happen, so I was emboldened to think that coloring images stamped with Blackberry Bliss would work fine. Well – I discovered that it isn’t always going to be fine! The ink didn’t bleed into the coloring, but something definitely happened. So… I will definitely be sticking with the Tuxedo Black ink when I’m going to be coloring with Stampin’ Blends. There is a good reason that Stampin’ Up!™ recommends using that ink.

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