Happy Birthday Bellany! | Birthday 2025

It's soon-to-be our baby girl Bella's 7th birthday and to help show her how much we love her and how much she means to us, I created a cute mermaid themed card. I'll be using two main products - the mermaid stamp from Trinity Stamps and the birthday coverplate from Simon Says Stamp. Let's get started!

I started the card project by stamping out the mermaid character from the Trinity Stamps "Mermazing" stamp set onto Copic Xpress-It white cardstock using Lawn Fawn's Jet Black ink pad. I allowed the ink to fully dry before coloring since I chose to add color using Copic markers. For coloring the mermaid, these are the marker colors I chose:

Skin: E04, E11, E33

Tail, Shell in Hair, Swim Top: BG49, BG57, BG23

Hair: E29, E37, E33

After the mermaid was colored, I added shimmer to the turquoise parts with the Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Glitter Gloss pen, white highlights using a Sakura white 08 Gelly Roll pen, and colored her eyes using a Sakura Black Glaze pen. You can choose to omit these steps if you wanted to, but I thought it added a little livliness to the mermaid. Once the shimmer and white highlights were dry, I fussy cut the image, then used a black marker to color the cut edges of the mermaid.

Next, I cut a piece of Tonic Mermaid Shimmer Ombre Glitter Cardstock to measure 4-1/4" x 5-1/2" which will serve as the background for my card front. I also cut a piece of white cardstock to measure 4-1/2" x 5-3/4" and ink blended three Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Oxide inks from one end of the panel to the next using these colors: Peacock Feathers, Crackling Campfire, and Antique Linen. It will be okay that the Crackling Campfire and Peacock Feathers won't necessarily want to blend together - it won't be noticeable in the end. After I ink blended the panel, I allowed the ink to dry back about 50% of the way and took my Antique Linen Oxide ink pad and smeared ink onto my glass mat (to avoid color contamination) and blended the Antique Linen lightly across the entire surface of the panel with my foam blender. This step will help tone down the Crackling Campfire and Peacock Feathers to help it to be more cohesive with the Tonic Mermaid Shimmer Ombre Glitter Cardstock background panel. Once the ink blended panel completely dried, I used the Simon Says Stamp "Happy" cover die and die cut the ink blended panel ensuring the "Y" in Happy was on the same end as the Peacock Feathers inked end of the cardstock panel.

Before beginning the next step, I lined my Tim Holtz Splat Box with a sheet of non-stick parchment paper. Then I discarded the negative pieces of the die cut panel and placed all the outline pieces (including the little inner outline pieces from the A and Ps) onto the parchment paper in the Splat Box. I want these outline pieces to have an element of shine to them, so I thoroughly misted all the outlines with Ranger's Distress Resist Spray, carefully removed them from the Splat Box and placed them onto a clean piece of parchment paper and set them aside to dry.

While the cover die outline was drying, I decided to use a Sakura 10 white Gelly Roll pen and add white highlights here and there on the actual letters that spelled out HAPPY that will be placed back onto the outline of the cover die - again, you can skip this step if you want to.

I die cut a second Happy cover die panel from Brutus Monroe's white "Not Your Mama's 130lb Cardstock" to add some dimension to the ink blended/Resist Spray coated outline and I also stamped the BIRTHDAY! sentiment from the same Simon Says Stamp "Happy" stamp set that coordinates with the cover die onto a scrap piece of the Brutus Monroe"Not Your Mama's 130lb Cardstock" using Gina K Designs "Blue Lagoon" ink and simply trimmed it to size using a paper trimmer.

I added glue to the reverse side of the ink blended cover die panel and adhered it to the 130lb cardstock version and adhered those to the glitter cardstock panel. After that, I glued all the individual letters and the centers of the A and Ps onto the card front in their appropriate locations and placed my Misti on top so that everything would adhere nicely.

I strategically placed thin foam squares to the back of the little mermaid and the birthday sentiment and placed them into the lower right corner of the card front. Lastly, I glued a scattering of five Simon Says Stamp "Opal Gems" around the mermaid and sentiment and adhered the completed card front onto a side folding A2, Concord & 9th "Oceanside" card base.

This was a quick and fun card to make, I hope it'll inspire you to create some mermaid fun for the little one in your life. Thank you for stopping by and happy making!