Fall Colors Distressed Happy Birthday Card

This week's Creative Cat Crew color challenge #27 are Halloween colors. I do not as a rule make Halloween cards, so I decided to make a fall colors birthday card using Timeless Textures. I chose a small simple sentiment from At Home With You. The colors for this challenge are: Basic Black, Pumpkin Pie, Garden Green, and white. Here is the image used for inspiration: 

I knew I wanted a black distressed looking sponged edge, liking how that looked I worked in from the upper left. I started with the green area which is a set of three horizontal stamps. You could pick any three, I chose the three nondescript stamps, because I wanted to use shapes elsewhere. I then stamped the orange filigree two times, one above left and then below right of the green with some overlap and by this time knew I wanted a single layer card.

That left me space bottom right for a smallish sentiment in black. I remember the all caps happy birthday from At Home With You. With that element in place I needed more black above. I added the black rings and finished up stamping with the small black splats. Not feeling that it was "finished", I used black, silver, gold and white sequins from the current Stampin' Up! clearance rack. I trimmed the focal down quite a bit, leaving room for a 1/32" mat of orange and 1/4" mat of white which is the card base. I popped up the orange and focal layer. 

I am entering this project in the following challenges:

• Creative Cat Crew Color Challenge #27
• Tic Tac Toe Challenge #TTTC019 - Left to right diagonal - Fall | Gold | Autumn
• Simply Papercraft - Challenge #51