Sugar Skull Birthday

This card was a commission, but as the recipient's birthday was yesterday it seemed safe to share.  I was given the brief of purple as a main colour and sugar skulls as a theme.  I recently bought some of the stamps, dies and embossing folders from the Day of the Dead collection by Sheena Douglass and Crafter's Companion, so these seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

The photo looks blue, but was definitely purple!

 
I started by brayering Versamark ink over the inside front of the embossing folder.  Once it had been put through the Grand Caliber I added silver embossing powder and heated from below for a smooth finish.
 










Once the heat embossing was complete, I trimmed the four sides and painted purple Spectrum Noir AquaTint ink from the Bright and Beautiful set across the white skulls to colour them.

Part way through the process.

I cut and embossed the large skull die on Sheena's stamping card and used the stamps from the matching stamp set to add details around the eyes, forehead and jaw with Black Onyx Versafine ink, heat embossing with clear detail embossing powder.  These were then highlighted using the same colour AquaTint as the background.  I added black card behind the eyes and emphasized the teeth with a light coating of silver gilding wax.
 




The background was mounted onto black, silver and black card, before being added to the front of an A5 portrait card blank, made from a piece of A4 hammered white card. 
The final touch was a Happy Birthday peel off; coloured purple and added to a silver and black tag cut using the Pierced Flags dies by Sue Wilson.