Hot Air Balloon Birthday Wishes

I made this card for Papertrey Ink's Make It Monday Challenge, Watercoloring Embossed Images.  This is a fun technique.

All of the stamps are from Papertrey Ink's Up, Up, and Away set.  I started by stamping the hot air balloons on watercolour paper.  I put a few drops of different coloured reinkers on a piece of plastic and got out a container of water and a brush.  Then, taking small amounts of ink and water, I carefully painted the balloons.  For the baskets, as I don't have a yeller reinker, I tried something different.  I coloured on the plastic with a water based Crayola marker to get some ink, and used that.  When they were dry I cut them out.

For the background (also on watercolour paper) I painted the hills with a peacock shade of green, using more water to wash out the colour for the hills further back (and yes, I realized after gluing my balloons on that I'd messed up the perspective).  For the clouds I again coloured with markers on the plastic, this time in two shades of grey.  I added some water (probably too much) and painted the colour directly on the cloud stamps.  I actually like the marbled effect I got.  It worked well for clouds, though I won't try that for solid images.

I glued the two smaller balloons on the page and used pop-dots for the largest one.  I also punched one cloud and popped that on for dimension.  Finally I stamped my sentiment and added it to the back (and then realized I should have done that before adding the popped elements).