Masculine Mica and Layers

This card started life as an experiment with building up layers on a tag, and ended up as a pleasing masculine birthday card. 

I started with a #8 manila tag and dabbed Stormy Sky distress ink through the Tim Holtz Burlap stencil to create a resist.  Once dry I blended on Scattered Straw and Mustard Seed distress inks adding someWalnut Stain  at the edge.  I made up a solution of Aged Mahogany reinker with water in a mini mister, as I don't have any of the distress sprays, and lightly spritzed through the Tim Holtz Dot Fade layering stencil in a couple of places; as you can see I over spritzed in the bottom left corner and ended up with a splodge but I decided to leave it as I was going to be adding the 'splatters' anyway.  I built up layers of Walnut Stain distress ink through the Splatters layering stencil and added some stamped images using black Archival ink.  The stamps that I used were from the AOD 2 - Nautical collection by the Stamp Man.  Once I was happy with the finished tag, I went back round the edge with Walnut Stain distress ink to finish.

To make the card, I took a piece of A4 dark brown card and folded it to create an A5 portrait blank.  I used some of the bunting stamps from the Anna Griffin banners and bunting stamp set (sadly I believe that they have been discontinued), and stamped them using Versamark ink, followed by a dusting of gold perfect pearls.  I stamped the open bunting onto a piece of smooth cream cardstock- there are only 5 in the line so I added a 6th on the end - before adding gold embossing powder and heat embossing.  I also stamped the rosette and the fish tail banner onto cream card.  The appropriate numbers and letters to make up the age and the name were added onto the rosette and bunting, and then heat embossed in gold; all three items were cut out, leaving a narrow cream border.  I didn't have a happy birthday stamp small enough to heat emboss the sentiment, so I had to make do with a gold peel off instead.  I stuck the tag onto the card with glue and added the rosette and sentiment using foam pads for dimension.  As the name banner didn't fit onto the card exactly, I drew a line and bow using a fine gold Sakura Pen-Touch pen to add the finishing touch.