Hello there! It’s time for our new challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches, where Rachel has given us a lovely tonal palette to play with. I thought it would work well with the SHAC Balloons stamps for a very simple birthday card (I have to confess, these have been sitting on my desk for a while now and have only just come out to play!).

I cut a topper of premium card slightly smaller than an A6 card blank and positioned the second and third largest balloons on it, so I could pick them up with my mega mount. Using Spot-on Sponges, I blended ‘broken china’ and ‘chipped sapphire’ Distress Oxides onto the stamps and stamped them into place.

Having then covered my balloons with the pre-cut masks that come with the stamps, I could then ink up the largest balloon in the same way and sit that between the first two. Without adding any more in to it, I gently smoothed the Spot-on Sponge with ‘chipped sapphire’ across from the masks onto the large balloon, to add shade behind the two smaller ones.

I added one of the sentiments from the Dotted Blooms stamps in ‘shadow grey’ Archival ink and drew the strings in for the other balloons with a grey Perga Colour pen. I then simply attached the topper to my A6 card blank.

This will be winging it’s way to a friend for their birthday later this week – and I think I may make some more of these in other colours! Thanks should go to AAA Cards for the inspiration from their layout, and I’m also going to add this to the galleries at Cardz4Galz, who want to see circles, and at Simply Clean & Simple for their option of ‘things that fly’ (which is what balloons do, isn’t it?)