Chalkboard Birthday Card

This is a card I made for my friend Saige's birthday. It is the first time I tried the "chalkboard" look. I used a piece of specially coated black card stock from the Chalkboard Stack by DCWV. It acts like a chalkboard so I could have written and drawn designs with chalk. I may do this in the future but for this card I wanted to use some small clear stamps from my collection. To make the chalkboard grungy, I first tried smearing around some white ink with my finger but it was coming out too strong so I used actual chalk. I initially tried to line up the stamps inside the shape (Tim Holtz Styled Labels by Sizzix) but ended up stamping them one at a time since the stamps had too much extra around the designs to make them stamp closely on the acrylic block. I used StayzOn ink in white.

To line the edge of the shape and to draw the balloon string, I used a white marker pen. I am still looking for a good gel pen (I have some on order); most of the ones I have tried skip or make a line down the center where the ball is located. If anyone has a suggestion for a good white gel pen, please leave me a comment!

The candles were both stamped and cut with a combo cupcake set from Spellbinders and Hampton Art that I bought at Michaels. I stamped them with Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored them with Copic Sketch markers. The two shades of blue card stock are from Bazzill Basics. I'm not sure from which pack I got the background design paper (sorry!).