Many of my friend’s birthdays are in February and March, so I currently find myself busy making birthday cards. I often like some of my card designs so much that I create a larger version in my art journal too. Here is one of those pages and I’m sending those of you who are celebrating your birthday this time of year – Happy Birthday Wishes!

The background was created exactly the same way as my card by using Festive Berries and Abandoned Coral Distress Inks. I blotted the ink pad directly on an acrylic block, spritzed it with water, and then I pressed the block or dripped the ink onto my page. I wanted a mottled effect so I built up the layers of colour gradually. As I had more space on my journal page, I also concentrated the colour on the right hand side of the page fading to white on the left. I then sectioned my page using masking tape and I stamped a Script stamp by Kaisercraft and Serpentine Background stamp by Art Impressions using black Archival Ink, alternating the designs. This masking technique also worked really well on the card and it was a fun technique to try. Again I made sure the stamping faded out as it reached the right hand side of the page to leave white space. I added some torn cherry blossom card to the edges of the page using Winsor & Newton Matt Gel to stick it down. This card is from a luxury topper set called Eastern Promise by Hunkydory. I also fussy cut the lanterns from the same card and stuck them down using double-sided foam tape. The gold flowers are outline stickers and the circles with various oriental style images are from the same topper set, which I attached using double-sided tape. I added little gold butterflies, blue gemstones and the name of my friend and her birth date to finish the page.
With the shades of red I used for the background, I’m pleased to be able to join this month’s theme of “Fifty Shades of Red” being hosted by Linda over at Art Journal Journey.

At this point I was hoping to show you my inspiration; the thing is, I forgot to take a photo of my original card – oops! So to give you an idea, here’s another card I made which looks very similar, although I used a totally different colour palette. In actual fact, my journal page stayed true to my original card design; as well as using my friend’s favourite colours of red and coral, I used the same background stamp designs and masking technique, the same gold flowers and butterflies, similar lantern topper decorations and gemstones, and the lovely cherry blossom card was used to create the interior of the birthday card.

For another friend, who lives locally, I made a birthday cake too; it’s a Victoria sponge filled with strawberry jam and butter cream then covered in sugar paste fondant icing, all of which is homemade, and the little daisy flowers are edible wafers. It was so funny when I delivered it as her hubby answered the door, he really loves cake and his eyes lit up when he saw the box. So I’m not really sure how much cake she got to eat herself (grin!).
Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.
Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page:
- Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Festive Berries, Abandoned Coral)
- Ranger Archival Ink (Jet Black)
- Art Impressions wood mounted stamp (Serpentine Background T2773)
- Kaisercraft clear stamp (Script CS572)
- Hunkydory Luxury Topper Collection (Eastern Promise EAST104)
- Magenta Style outline stickers (Gold 0501)
- Docrafts Antia’s Outline Stickers (Wistful Wings Gold ANT810131)
- Poundland (504 Gems)
- Wilko (Blue Masking Tape – Low tac)
- Winsor & Newton (Matt Gel)
- The Range double-sided foam tape
























For the picture, I cut an oval piece of music sheet from a Spanish song called “La Paloma” (the dove) by Yradier and stuck it to the page using a UHU Stic. As you can see I made sure I included the word Spanish and the name of the composer. I then edged the oval with a black frame which is a sticker.
The Spanish lady is from an advertisement I saw in a booklet, and as you can see only the top half of the dress was included on the advert, so I got creative and created the bottom half myself. Luckily I had kept many copies of the booklets, so I cut the dress sleeves and bodices out and designed a flowing skirt for her dress and then some shoes. It was a bit fiddly cutting the pieces out and arranging them but I think it worked really well and she looks like she is dancing along to the music while playing her maracas. I added further detail to the dress using a Derwent Graphik marker to make the pieces flow together. To finish I added the red and gold gems to the page which reminded me of the colours of the Spanish flag.


