I was thinking about another project when I fell over the birthday candles stamp. This used to be on a wheel – the idea being that you could pop in an ink cartridge and stamp as far as you liked. Stampin’ Up! has discontinued wheels because they aren’t easy to stamp in straight lines but they also provide clear mount cling foam which means that you can convert your wheels into regular stamps. All you do is carefully peel the rubber stamp off the wheel starting at the seam and stick the rubber onto the clear mount cling foam and you’re done. A new clear mount stamp!

I decided that I wanted to emboss the candles in gold but, thinking that the card needed to have a 40 on it, figured that I could mask some of the flames and put the 40s there. But first I embossed the sentiment thinking, for some crazy reason, that I could stamp and sprinkle the gold embossing powder on both the sentiment and the candles before using the heat gun (trying not to warp the paper too much). But after stamping the Birthday Wishes, I came to my senses and heat embossed it. After masking and stamping the candles and embossing in gold, I realised that also embossing the 40s in gold was just going to be too much. I tested on a scrap piece to see how clear, cherry cobbler and gold looked and wasn’t thrilled with any so selected black. I stamped the 0 in versamark and then the 4 thinking that the stampamajig wouldn’t mess up the ink too badly that way before sprinkling the black embossing powder on and heating it. Then I obviously repeated it twice more.

I think it would have been more balanced if I’d used black on the sentiment too or perhaps used white instead of black. But on the whole, I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out.

Base: Cherry cobbler 8.5″ by 5.5″

Stamp sets: Birthday candles (retired), Four You, Typeset Numbers (I think – I borrowed this set, so I’m not certain)

Ink: Versamark

I hope that one of these 40th birthday cards fits the bill – currently they are in Julia’s mail box and she’s yet to see them!