Birthday card for an 18-year-old boy

I just realized that it’s been almost four months since I last posted here on the blog. Unfortunately, these days, a lot of things have to come together for me to be able to create. First of all, I need a meaningful occasion (a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas), second, I need time and, last but not least, I need inspiration. My oldest nephew's 18th birthday is definitely such an occasion.

And here is the tutorial.

I took a big piece of watercolour paper and painted green with acrylic paint. Then I splattered with gold acrylic paint. This time I used Schmincke and DecoArt paints.

Then I cut out the numbers, using Sizzix Thinlits die, Alphanumeric Stretch Lower by Tim Holtz (665207). Next was to cut out the stars. For this, I used die sets: Sizzix Thinlits die, Snowglobe (661603) and Sizzix Bigz die, Crescent Moon&Stars (658716). Then I painted them gold with the same gold paint I used for the spattering.

The text is part of the Stampers Anonymous, Floristry (CMS485) stamp set. And I heat embossed with Ranger Princess Gold embossing powder.

The banner was cut out with Sizzix Thinlits die, Celebrate Colorize (666285). Here I used the same paper as for the text. Because this colour paper is one (or two) shade lighter than my background. 

With this card, I would like to joint the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge: Thinking of you.