Get Carded: A Yummy Birthday To You!

Hello! Am mailing off a food gift to a niece for her birthday, and although I hadn't planned it, her birthday card has a food-themed design:

Materials used: white card stock, altered vintage restaurant menu, scrap of hand-painted paper (not done by me) cut from birthday cake stencil, scrapbook paper scrap "frosting" and yellow art paper scrap "flame" (frosting and flame cut freehand) and "Happy Birthday" stamped on white card stock scrap with black StazOn ink; scrap was edged in red StazOn ink. 

About that vintage restaurant menu: several years ago I bought a handful of them at a garage sale run by an antique dealer. I promptly altered the heck out of a few of them; really gave them the works: painted over them, then added random stamping and the random gluing-on of various bits of ephemera (vintage postcards, art paper scraps, punched shapes, etc). Yes, it took awhile to complete, but this sort of project doesn't have to be done all at once, and I don't believe that I did so. After the painted menus were dried, I added elements here and there until I liked the finished look. 

A little of this sort of "paper" goes a long way - besides being used as a background piece on the card above, it's also effective cut into shapes and used as decorative elements that way.