Happy 21st

My partners nephews’ 21st is coming up, and as per Irish tradition, this calls for a ginormous party – and gifts! (And what are gifts, without a card?)

The background
I figured having a dark grey card base, as well as having a big, black sentiment would mean that having the mortar in a dark colour would muddle the card – and I also wanted the bricks quite dark.
However, I didn’t want the mortar to be completely white – why make things simple, huh!?
The solution was to go in with distress ink here and there on my white cardstock to bring in some dirt, for this I used old paper & antique linen.
For the bricks, I used a mix of fried brick and frayed burlap as I didn’t want them to be a clean red.

The sentiment
I wanted the sentiment to be as close to the stencil background as possible (not a paper die cut) to give the illusion of graffiti.
My solution was to download a graffiti style font and cut out “happy 21st” with my Silhouette Cameo onto some Silhouette Stencil Vinyl (to ensure that the embossing ink wouldn’t seep under the sentiment).
Unfortunately, the adhesive on the stencil vinyl is super tacky and ripped my paper in a couple of places, as well as the sentiment. I tried fixing it by going over again with the brick stencil and some distress ink.

The material
Distress ink: fried brick, frayed burlap, old paper, antique linen & embossing ink
Stencils: Tim holtz bricked, home made stencil using Silhouette Cameo, Silhouette stencil vinyl & Ghang font
Embossing powder: wow! Primary ebony regular

Challenges
I’m entering this card in the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: Stencil it