Hello there,

I am sharing a birthday card that I recently posted on my Instagram page. I am currently participating in Kathy Racoosin’s TheDailyMarker30day coloring challenge http://www.thedailymarker.com/  and have accumulated a lot of stamped, colored images. Coloring and cutting images is usually the most time consuming part of card making. So having few premade items on hand made this card making process really fast and easy.

For this card I used already made background that was created with ink-smooshing technique. This is one of my favorite ways to create a fast and easy background for a card. Every time I do any kind of inking or ink blending I will spray the leftover ink on my craft mat with water and smoosh a piece white cardstock on it. I have a small collection of colorful backgrounds that are ready to be used. This is also a time saver 🙂

I had several bear images, bunch of balloons and party hats from My Favorite Things – Beary Special Birthday stamp set already colored and cut so after I selected my images I just added some highlights with white gel pen.

Now all I had to do is decide where I want to place my images on the card, attach them and stamp the sentiment. The entire process took me probably 10-15 minutes including die cutting of an additional layer of colored cardstock to accent the color of the balloons and the party hat.

This card came together so fast that I decided to made another one.

Having some pre-colored, precut images and sentiments as well as several backgrounds makes last minute card making a quick and easy process.

I hope this post gives you inspiration to create some card elements ahead of time so the next time you need to make a quick card half of the process will already be done 🙂