Flying High - and making clouds with cotton wool

Hello Everyone

Miserable day out so great excuse to stay cosy in the craft space. Here's the card I made for my son's birthday recently - one of the many August birthdays!

Alun has been flying microlights for two years now so when I spotted this little wood-mounted stamp from Hobby Art I didn't resist. I've yet to find a stamp of a microlight aircraft ... so this one had to do.

The background of the toppers was made using a technique I watched Barbara Gray demonstrate using a cotton wool ball. The cotton wool is fluffed out a bit, dabbed onto the VersaMark ink pad and then gently dabbed here and there on the coated card. This is followed with inking all over with a sky blue ink using a make-up sponge - I used the blue in the Hydrangea Big & Juicy pad. You can see the VersaMark resisting as you cover the card. The final thing to do is buff the card with tissue/soft kitchen paper to reveal the clouds.

I used an off-cut from the background to make the greeting to match.

The backing paper and insert are computer generated using a Joanna Sheen CD.

Even the back is covered in clouds.

Materials:
A4 white cardstock for base;
Snippets of sky blue & pastel blue cardstock and silver holographic card for matting and layering; Design paper and insert computer generated using Joanna Sheen's Nostalgia Collection CD1;
Clarity Stamp A6 coated card for topper and greeting;
VersaMark, cotton wool, Big & Juicy Hydrangea and a make-up sponge to create clouds and sky background;
Stamps - Hobby Art, Hawker Hart (plane), Craft Stamper free stamp, Flying High and Stampin' Up, Birthday Wishes from the So Happy for You set;
Memento Ink, Tuxedo Black;
ProMarkers - Poppy, Ice Grey 3 Cobalt Blue & Indigo Blue; Perfect Pearls, Forever Blue; Turquoise/white star patterned ribbon from stash.

And here's a shot of the birthday boy - can't believe he's now 42 years old ... where does the time go???

Love this happy photo of Alun with his lovely daughter, Jolene, and his great-niece, my baby great-granddaughter, Rhian, who was fascinated with my granddaughter's long blonde hair.  Rhian now weighs in at 16lbs, has eleven teeth and has learned how to crawl - her mother reckons she will be walking very soon!

I'm entertaining today so there's been a flurry of cleaning and dusting this morning. By special request, it's meat loaf on the menu - DH just loves meat loaf - so I'd better go and prepare it, ready for the oven. Sigh ... there won't be much crafting done until much later today.

Happy crafting,