Teenage Boy Birthday Card

My awesome grandson Austin is about to be fourteen.  How does one make a teenage boy birthday card that will grab his attention???  Well, this guy has an awesome sweatshirt that he wears a lot and I decided to use it as my color and style inspiration.

Needless to say, I had forgotten the blue, red, orange and yellow.  I do see those colors now that I located the sweatshirt photo.  Those color aren’t in my card!

I promise you that creating the colorful layer is messy!. But fun.  And you never know how it will turn out.  The card below is my first attempt and, although I really like it, it’s not the look I was going for.  I was looking for dripping drops of ink, more like the card above.

These are my supplies: 

The first thing to do, on a 3-3/4″ x 5″ piece of Watercolor Paper is to (for this card above) draw three vertical, not quite parallel lines with a juicy wet Aqua Painter.  Over newspaper or oil cloth or some protective surface, add drops of Lemon Lime Twist ink refill at the top (hold paper vertically) of the Watercolor Paper and let it run ‘downhill’. Encourage the ink, by leaning the paper one way or the other, to run a bit off of the wet path.  Perhaps give a light squirt of ‘encouragement’ with the Stampin’ Spritzer.  Repeat with the Bermuda Bay and Tranquil Tide ink refills.  Let the colors run together.  Your fingers could or should be a mess by now!. Set the Watercolor Paper aside to dry.

I really think that Basic Black layer adds a definite POP to the overall design of the card.  What do you think?  Which do you prefer?

The guitar, shoes and head phones were stamped in VersaMark ink on Whisper White card stock, sprinkled with (retired) Black Embossing Powder* and then heat set using the Heat Tool.  Then I used the Aqua Painter to take color from the lid of the stamp pad to color the items.  Finally, I “fussy cut” them using my Paper Snips.

The card on the left below was my first attempt.  I spritzed the entire piece of Watercolor Paper, added drops of the three main colors (Bermuda Bay, Lemon Lime Twist and Tranquil Tide) and you can see how they spread.  It’s just a totally different look than I had planned.

After the watercolor paper dried I stamped the You’re Awesome” image using VersaMark ink.  Then I sprinkled it with Black Embossing Powder and heat embossed it.  The guitar was attached with Mini Dimensionals and earphone were attached directly to the card layer with Multipurpose Liquid Glue.

• Black Stampin’ Emboss Powder will be returning to the Stampin’ Up! lineup of embossing powders in the 2018-2019 Catalog that goes live on June 1st.  That gets a loud woohoo from me.

You can view and purchase any of the products used for this card by clicking on the appropriate image above.

I’m pretty happy with my teenage boy birthday card and think Austin will like it too.  I wonder if he’ll notice the similarity between the card and his sweatshirt?  I hope that if you chose the Epic Celebrations stamp set during Sale-a-Bration you’ll pull it out and use it!  Maybe you held on to Gorgeous Grunge when it retired a few years ago.  Pull it out too and challenge yourself to make a fun card.  Hopefully my card has inspired you.