Happy New Year!

December 2010 really went out with a bang for us - a household full of sick children, a car that broke down twice, a 3 foot snowstorm and the holidays.  Phew!!! I am happy to report that things are starting to normalize a bit now, even though, admittedly, I still have up my tree and decorations, lol.  Oh well, something to do another day. 
No, today was my "lets make a birthday card for my best friend" day.  And since I've been blurfing (i.e. blog surfing) for the past few days and not crafting, I stumbled upon Bugaboo Stamps' freebie friday image, Dottie Cupcake.  Coincidentally, Bugaboo's current challenge on their Catch the Bug blog is Anything Goes!!!  So I am entering this card for Bugaboo's challenge and additionally, for the Crafty Sentiments Designs Challenge Blog's challenge, Anything Goes!  How perfect is that?!?

So here is the birthday card for my BFF.  I felt like doing something totally different when I saw this awesome image...but then for some reason I went with this sugary sweet blue and I'm happy I did.  I know it seems simple, but thats what I was going for.  I used Artist Loft watercolor pencils, patterned paper from The Sweet Stack, light blue pearls on the mount and white pearls for Dottie's earings.  I made an oversized photo corner using the same background paper.  I used Crystal stickles for the cupcake's frosting and distressed the edges of the image in Colorbox Sky Blue pigment ink.  Sentiment reads "Happy Birthday to the Girl that's still got it"

Flip open the card and inside it reads:  "Now if you could just remember where you put it!!  Happy Birthday with Love"    I retouched the photo to omit my family's names, but you can see that I used the same patterned paper from the front of the card along with some more of the blue pearls.