Oh My Gosh Happy Birthday Panda

It's taken me awhile to get around to using the recent panda and birthday themed kit from Simon Says. I really love that layout challenges help me get to my desk and craft. They make it a little easier to spend time actually making cards -- otherwise I keep getting overwhelmed with ideas. Challenges help narrow my thinking down a lot. This layout is from CAS(E) this Sketch #336.

With the panda stamps, I am really glad for having a MISTI. It's nice to stamp the solid black areas of the panda over and over until it's good and dark. I stamped the panda in Memento ink so I could color with alcohol markers. Memento doesn't always stamp large solid color areas without spots or texture. So re-stamping that was great. 

For once I also did the inside of the card!! I inked the balloons in gray Staz-On, and they came out a little darker than I liked, so I decided to color them with colored pencils. I find colored pencils work better over colored paper as they are opaque. They are also safe with Staz-On, which is alcohol ink so alcohol markers wouldn't work.

Hope you enjoy my card!