Three Ferns Easel Birthday Card

Today is my hubby Owen's birthday and this is the card I made for him.  I saw a lovely card a long, long time ago using the Hero Arts 'Three Ferns' stamp - one of my all time favourite stamps - and saved it to Pinterest as a card to CASE.  It's taken a while but finally here's my version of THIS CARD made by Tina.

I inked the stamp with Peeled Paint Distress Ink, spritzed it with water and stamped onto a piece of watercolour paper.  I inked the stamp again with Peeled Paint ink and added Gathered Twigs and Fired Brick inks to the stamp with sponge daubers.  I then spritzed the stamp with Perfect Pearls Pearl mist, stamped the image on a separate piece of watercolour paper and die cut the larger squares.

Firstly, I did try one small Nestie square die to cut out several squares but after I'd stamped on the squares I was struggling to position them evenly over the top of the image underneath.  So I used a grid die that cuts several larger squares at once.  It was much easier to line up after stamping first and then die cutting the squares!  I do think Tina's original design with the arrangement of the smaller squares looks nicer - but I was happy to cheat and go with the quicker, easier and less frustrating option!

Once I'd got my ferns panel sorted I decided to mount it on an easel card - using Early Espresso, Old Olive and Cajun Craze as my CS colours.  I went rootling in my stash for some suitable patterned paper and chose the green and white diagonal stripe design which is from a pack of SU! Christmas paper.  I popped up three fern squares plus the sentiment banner and I added a few silver nailheads to complete the card front.

Here's another view of the ferns panel so you can see the pearly shimmer.

Here's the bottom of the card.  I stamped the partial ferns image onto the Whisper White panel using the same colour Distress Inks and added just a light spritzing of the Perfect Pearls mist.  I stamped the sentiment which is from the same Hero Arts set as the sentiment I used on the card front so that ties together very nicely!  

A fourth fern square was left over as I only popped up three squares on the card front so I used that to decorate the front of the envelope.  Very gratifyingly Owen absolutely loved the card!

Supplies:
Stamps: Hero Arts 'Three Ferns', Hero Arts 'Messages With Flourish' set
CS: SU! Early Espresso, Old Olive, Cajun Craze, Whisper White, watercolour paper
Patterned paper: SU! 'Season of Cheer' DSP
Ink: SU! Cajun Craze, Ranger Tim Holtz Peeled Paint, Gathered Twigs & Fired Brick Distress Inks
Tools: Sizzix 'Grid Works 1 7/8" Squares' Thinlits die, MFT 'Fishtail Flag Stax' die set
Embellishments & accessories: Perfect Pearls 'Perfect Pearl' mist, silver metallic nailheads, SU! Dimensionals