Vintage Collage Birthday Card

I made this card for my dear friend Susan's birthday. I am also entering it in the Catered Crop Follow the Recipe Challenge. This is another newly discovered challenge blog for me and my first submission. The idea of this challenge is that the winner of the previous challenge provides the "recipe" for the next challenge (theme, papers, tools, etc.) You can choose any ingredient or ingredients from the recipe and add your own "spice" to make a new creation. Looking at the inspiration recipe and mine, I may have used more of the inspiration ingredients than I realized and not so much of my own spices, but I still am very happy with how this card turned out. It was a lot of fun to make.

Here is my recipe:

Colors: Sepia, Blues, Browns, Gold

Papers: Design paper (My Mind's Eye - I think :); dictionary page; shipping tag; scraps

Stamps: harlequin, sentiment, scroll (on twill tape)

Color Mediums: Distress Ink (Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain, Antique Linen), homemade glimmer spray (distress ink mixed with PearlEx powder and water)

Embellishments: Twill tape, lace, twine, buttons, beads, jewelry tag, thread, vintage clipart

Techniques: Tea dye, distress, sewing

Tools: die cuts, punches

Themes: Vintage, bird, birdcage, birthday

A few notes:

I soaked the gingham background paper in tea to give it an aged look. It was very bright before I did that.

The blue flower is made using the Martha Stewart Hydrangea punch. I punched it twice, pressed on the petals with a stylus to curl them and stacked the six pieces together to make the flower. I used a gold seed bead for the center.

The white flower is made from crepe paper. I colored it with a homemade glitter spray, then die cut the petals with a Nestabilities die. I layered them with regular white glue and puffed up the layers. I added three gold seed beads for the center. I really enjoyed working with the crepe paper. it's thin so you can manipulate it, but not as delicate as tissue paper. I got a big roll of white for less than a dollar and I can color it with inks or whatever to get the color I want. Pretty good buy.

The bird and birdcage images are from the awesome Graphics Fairy blog. If you like vintage images you should check it out. It has tons of cool stuff for free.

Thanks for looking!