Bokeh Birthday

Hello friends.  When I was making my cards for the PTI Blog Hop, I had a few extra background pieces that didn't make the cut for the challenge, but they weren't bad enough to throw away either, so I turned them into Bokeh backgrounds.  And I love what I came up with!  Take a look:

My girlfriend Sue gave me the really cool flower stamp (Penny Black) for my birthday a few weeks ago, and I just absolutely love how it looks against the background!  I did emboss it (and the "happy" from PTI's "Wet Paint" stamp set) with black embossing powder.  I did learn something with this card that I'll pass along to you fellow stampers...you can't stamp with regular dye ink on a Bokeh background!  I was able to make a "save" when I learned that little tidbit with this card though!  When I first stamped my sentiment with my Momento Tuxedo Black ink, it looked terrible!  Where the ink hit parts of the white circles that are stamped with pigment ink, the color showed up as gray instead of black...grrrrrr!  So I stamped the sentiment again (thank goodness for clear stamps!!!) with Versamark and then embossed using black embossing powder.  So a good tip for Bokeh backgrounds is to use die cuts or embossing when adding directly to that layer! :0)

Thanks so much for stopping by today and have a wonderful weekend!  We get to do the wonderful FAFSA this weekend and so looking forward to it...NOT!!!  I definitely don't want to wish my youngest daughters life away, but I will be so happy when we don't have to do this anymore!  Why can't the government just write things out in plain English so we can understand what they're asking?!!  OK, done ranting! :0)