Masculine Happy Birthday and a mini modeling paste tutorial

Hi all!  Here's my card for the MFTWSC196 and the CPC40 challenges.  I used a few stamps from the MPD Timeless set along with the matching die-namics.  The card base is safety orange, the main panel is olive and I used brick red for the layering.  The sentiment is from Celebrate Big.  I lightly stamped "Celebrate" with versarmark ink, then "happy birthday" with hot fudge ink.  I used a few of my STAX and Blueprints for extra details.

Now, for the mini tutorial!  I'm sure you've seen lots of people using modeling paste and stencils to get all of these cool designs on their cards.  I've seen a couple people use reindeers to COLOR the modeling paste but I don't have ANY reindeers (except for my Memento black), so I thought I would try it using my ink pads themselves.  In the first pic, you see where I stamped my ink pad directly onto my craft mat and a {not so attractive looking} dob of modeling paste.

Then I used my butter knife {yes, my GOOD butter knife} to mix the paste and ink.  Be careful to mix it completely so you're not surprised with a lump of white paste when you start spreading it on your card stock.

And here it is right after I removed my stencil.  At this point, I quickly go wash off my stencil, spreader (a.k.a. butter knife) then wipe my craft mat before anything has time to dry.  While you're doing all that, your card stock has time to dry.  Be sure to apply a thin layer of paste so it dries faster. I'm sure you would get a richer color by using the reinker, and maybe you also can by stamping ink on the mat more than once, but I still like that you get a cool tone on tone look.  Hope you give it a try!

Thanks for stopping by!