When I was little, I loved coloring books. Any medium would do: crayons, colored pencils or markers. I was proud of my large plastic case of Crayola crayons, organized by hue.

These days, I’ve been playing with alcohol-based markers. The inks can blend together easily because of the alcohol base. I haven’t done much blending with them yet, but I put them to use for creating a bright background pattern for a birthday card. Using pink and turquoise shades, I drew stripes upon stripes, freehand, in a random order. This effect can be done with regular markers, too, or neon highlighters, if you’re feeling adventurous.

Here’s how to make it:

Cut a 4 1/2-inch-square piece of white textured cardstock. Draw thick and thin vertical stripes, freehand, overlapping and in a random order using markers in several light and medium shades of pink and turquoise (I used Spectrum Noir markers in BP6, BT1, BT4, BT5, DR5 and PL1).

Make a card from a 5-by-10-inch piece pf white textured cardstock. Adhere the striped cardstock, centered, to the card’s front. Adhere 1 1/2-inch-tall white textured chipboard letters (mine are by Bazzill Basics) spelling “happy” across the striped cardstock, just below the center.

Cut a 3-by-1-inch piece of light-turquoise textured cardstock. Stamp “birthday” (I used part of the “birthday wishes” stamp from the Chelsea Sentiments collection by Brenda Walton for Inkadinkado) in neon-blue ink (Hero Arts), centered vertically and positioned closer to the left side of the paper.

Trim this piece to about 5/8 of an inch high. Trim the left end to a point. Using dimensional adhesive, adhere this piece next to the card’s right edge, slightly overlapping the bottom of the chipboard letters.