German Happy Birthday Card

So early next week it's my grandmother's birthday! My mom usually asks me a week ahead of time to make a card really quickly and send something, and usually, because she waited so long to ask, I don't make it in time. But this year, I preempted her, and brought it to a family gathering so we could all sign it, even though I live five hours away from home.

Also, important note: my grandmother lives in Germany. So I wrote "Happy Birthday" in German, instead of English.

Because I don't have many stamps that say "Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag," (read: I own ZERO stamps that say that), I decided to write it out by hand. I drew horizontal lines, and prewrote it on scratch paper to find the middle of the writing (and still ended up a little off center, grrr!)

But I don't use the Martha Stewart Peg Stamp Starter Kit stamps very often, and I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to bring a little class to the one-layer stamping.

 I actually thought this could be only a one layer card, but the bright teal of the marker really brings out the printed quality of the black and white so nicely, that I added that in.

I did the stripes by masking off the center writing and stamping with sticky notes, and then very carefully inking up the rectangle stamp from the American Crafts "Thanks" set so that I avoided the dotted line part of the stamp. Then I stamped each line individually! Gah! (I really need to get some background stamps.) As you can tell, I still got some of the dotted line stamped, but I liked the printed quality. It makes it look like an old school printed piece.



Materials:
Recollections Value Pack Cardstock Paper in Kraft
Recollections Value Pack Cardstock Paper in Neutral
Martha Stewart Art & Craft Marker in
Black Pen
Martha Stewart Peg Stamp Starter Kit
American Crafts Thanks Stamp Set
T-square ruler
Tombow Mono Adhesive
Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue
Tsukineko Versafine in Onyx Black
Bone Folder
Provocraft Paper Trimmer