Seahorse Birthday Card

Seahorse birthday card for William

My brother William is mentally handicapped.  He likes happy colours, especially bright, joyful pink.  Accordingly, in anything I make for Will, I always try to include a bit of pink.  The year before last I knitted him a forest green scarf, which included pink details at the edges.

The background of this card is a combination of pattern origami paper, a dark blue piece of insurance advertising literature (guess whose insurance has just come up for renewal?) and offcuts.  I layered a few pink, red, purple and gold offcut/recycled anenomes on the the background.  Then I stamped and embossed the seahorse, before backing it and hanging it on ribbon.  The embossing was weak (perhaps the embossing ink is getting a bit old), so I touched up sections with gold ink.  I then covered the background section in recycled pink netting and layered over that with more anenome pieces.  The sentiment came free with a magazine, but I jazzed it up with Glossy Accents.  Finally, I mounted everything on pearlescent blue cardstock.

When the card is held, the seahorse on its ribbon (and the seahorse's googly eye) both move behind the rustling anenomes and the netting, which I am hoping invokes an underwater feel.  If I am honest, I think that the colours and patterns are too diverse, too disjointed to work as a whole and overall the image is way too 'cute' for my liking.  That said, I think William will like it, and that is all that really matters.

Ingredients for Seahorse:

Foam seahorse stamp (no details on the stamp itself but I am fairly sure I got it from Craft Central)

Top Boss 'Tinted' embossing stamp pad, Stamp-n Stuff 'Jewelled Gold' embossing powder, heat tool 
Windsor & Newton 'Gold' ink

Cardstock in pearlescent blue, Dekon origami paper, recycled/off cuts card and paper

Recycled ribbon, recycled netting 

Lakeland googly eye

Free-with-a-magazine sentiment

Inkssentials Glossy Accents, Uhu glue, doublesided sticky tape