Celebrate at Artistic Outpost

Gingersnap Creations is celebrating their first birthday this month (and it's also the birthday of one of their founding femmes, Sharon Briss)!  And, to help in the celebration, along with celebrating lots of birthdays of their own design team members, Artistic Outpost is having a special March Referral contest.  Use only your Artistic Outpost stamps to make a card with a Party and/or Celebration theme, and link up your post HERE.  They are giving away a very generous prize to one lucky participant.

Now, I don't have any AO stamp sets that specifically relate to celebrations, but that's okay... use your creativity and anything goes.  I used this adorable little boy from the Bluebird stamp set... doesn't he look like he's delivering a special birthday bouquet?  I stamped him in three different purple inks, then mounted the images on vellum, backed with white cardstock.  I added a label holder with the definition of "celebrate" cut out of a $1 dictionary I found at Target (no guilt cutting this one up, for sure!).  The lovely crinkled seam binding is from Bluebird Lane's shop on Etsy (no relation, LOL!!), and the vintage sheet music is from my stash.

So here's the weird thing, and maybe someone can help me with this.  See the text image used on the green card base?  What a devil of a time I had with THAT.... you see, I first stamped it using Milled Lavender Distress Ink.  I assembled my card, left for a bit to get my camera and fiddle around, and when I came back, the text images were GONE.  Vanished.  UGH.  So I took the darned thing apart, and stamped again using Memento dye ink.  What the heck?  The cardstock is from Stampin' Up!.  Can one of you lovely inky-expert ladies/gents shed some light?  Is there a way to prevent this, or at least to have a clue as to when it's going to happen (to save the trouble of disassembling cards)?  Perhaps the base cardstock needs a little tiny bit of coating/gloss to it, and SU!'s doesn't.  Mystery of the day, LOL!

I'm off to try to make a Tag Tuesday tag before the next Tuesday rolls around.... gotta find some more crafty time.  Take care, all!