HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CINDY!!!!!

A good friend of mine is celebrating her BIG 4-0!!!! And the cool thing is that her birthday, November 12th, is the same day as my daughter's. Pretty neat, huh? This is the card I did for her. I Case'd it from Mary Fish at Stampin' Pretty, but for the life of me I cannot find it on her blog to link it direct (but here is the link to her home page). The card itself didn't take very long to make after I finally figured out what images I wanted to use and where I wanted them placed. Each square is punched out with the 1-1/4" punch. How much easier can it get?

I used soooo many new and retired sets to come up with this. The stamp sets I used were Beary Best Friends (the gift bag - retired), Aviary (the birdy in the cage - current), Just Believe (the flower circle and the leaves - current), Priceless (the butterfly - current), Hip Hip Hooray (the balloons - retired), Every Little Bit (the gumball machine - current), Bitty Birthday (the birthday cake - retired), Word Play (the "Wish Big" sentiment - current) and Punch Potpourri (the flowers that were punched out and placed on Stampin' Dimensionals - a current Level 1 Hostess set). The "C" was stamped with a non-SU! stamp, but it worked "Just Rite" for this. The DSP used on a couple of the squares (the numbers and the stripes) is from the Celebration pack. That is where the colors I used are from - Real Red, Pacific Point, Pear Pizzazz and Bashful Blue. The base is Bashful Blue with a Pear Pizzazz layer that holds the squares. You can't really tell from the picture, but the "i" in "wish" is dotted with a sparkly rhinestone --- cause every girl should get some bling for her birthday.

With all of that on the outside, I wanted to jazz up the inside a little, too. It has a Real Red and a Pacific Point layer underneath the Whisper White layer that has a sentiment from the It's Your Birthday set (retired) with a few flowers punched and added to the bottom corner. The sentiment was placed using my handy-dandy Stamp-a-ma-jig. I tried to keep the card as flat as possible, since it needed to be mailed, but I added an extra postage stamp just in case it was a little heavy from all of the layers. I really needed to do a WOW project, because Cindy is one of the most talented stampers that I know. Check out her blog here.

Cindy, I hope you had a great day and will have a marvelous year!!!!

Here's to you!!!!!