A dotty birthday card

The Stampotique designers challenge asks for polka dots this week. I made a birthday card for a cousin... finished it of this morning just before we left for the birthday party (and actually remembered to take photo's of it too! Besides SDC I'm posting for the Stampinback May challenge (Numbers) and the SimonSaysStamp challenges Monday and Wednesday (Anything goes on both of them)

The background is red bister on Stampinback cardstock, into which I stamped a dotty background stamp (Tim Holtz) with bleach. The boy looked so small that I needed something more around him, so I took a TCW circle grid stencil, laid a larger circle stencil (Stampinback) on top of it and added crackle paste. Because the bister coloured the crackle paste pink, I continued with an embossing dabber and white embossing powder. I expected to lose the crackle texture, but as can be seen, the effect is quite cool and the crackle still shows. For more interest I sprinkled some embossing powder around and heated from underneath, because it wasn't attached with anything. The grunge numbers are from VivaLasVegaStamps and have been stamped with Versamark and heat embossed with black. I'm really happy with the grungy look, and the fact that I could use a black card blank for this without getting a gloomy result!