Surprise 50th Birthday in 2010!

My friend Carla's 50th Surprise Birthday invite...did I dare do a card that would be seen outside the family?

Oh sure, why not...Carla's been a friend a long time.  She'll be forgiving in my learning my new hobby!  So, I just dove in and even made my own flower!  Since I did not have a flower die, I made a hand-drawn template and hand-cut all the flower layers from different colors of cardstock and design paper.  Did I have a clue if it would be a flower when done...heck NO!  It was just a papercutter, scissors, glue and little ol' me to make the layout, flower, computer-produced sentiment and poetic verse inside!  It is actually amazing what you can do without a lot of tools, but it does take more time that's for sure.

February 2, 2010: Husband's birthday card!

And then came John's birthday (February 2010)...so it was time to try my own creative juices again.  I only had some scraps of paper actually leftover from my Christmas cards, but I was actually able to use them and make a non-Christmasy-looking card.  I had a moose button laying around and feathers from a craft project several years ago, and I thought. . .hey, if I cut the button shank off and make the little mouse flat it might just work!  Then it needed something more, and I spotted the bag of feather in my craft storage box.  I stole the brown scalloped oval from a kit of cards I bought to practice with and had not yet put together, and...Voila here it is!