Birthday Bonanza

After a long and not-so-hot summer, September hits our family with a quadruple-whammy of birthdays in the first week alone. This can get expensive (admittedly one of the birthdays is my own, so I can't complain too much :-)) but it's also a great time to try and get creative. After spotting one of the envelope exchange jobs I'd done for my most recipient, my sister requested a hand-made card for her own birthday and I was happy to get scribbling with a few experiments.

Pencil sketch of the flourish

 After a little consideration of my efforts, I settled for a simple 'Happy Birthday' in gold gouache on front front of the card with a little hand-designed flourish (more of a doodle) underneath (see right).

Final 'rough'

As usual the final practice version of the card turned out to be the best one *sigh*, but I set about making four usable cards, each slightly different for the other.

The finished version sent to my sister looked a little like this:

Final version: Schminke Gold Pearl Gouache on Purple card, done with a Brause 66EF nib

(in fact it looked suspiciously like that!) the final four can be seen here in the gallery.