in celebration of FRIENDS!

i'm up today on the Crafter's Companion Facebook page, and yesterday was a co-worker's birthday, so natch i whipped something up for the occasion!  see, since i started giving handmade cards to people at work, a store bought card simply WILL NOT DO.  ever.  even if i have no time whatsoever, they refuse to settle.

SO!  Liz turned a darling 24.  SERIOUSLY.  she could nearly be my daughter (i said NEARLY!).  and i grabbed my Mulberry Wood "Friend" set from Crafter's Companion, stamped the little fuzzpaw with Jet Black StazOn, coloured him up with my pencils, and added the sentiment from Sheena's A Little Bit Sketchy "Only Words - Through the Rain".  Liz has a bit of a thing for blue, so i added a few embellies in blue, blinged it up, and VOILA!  this little card was born:

the clouds?  i love this part!  i grabbed a sheet of pale blue vellum and punched them out...  this is a one-layer card (not my forte', but every once in a while i surprise myself!), so i just laid them on top of the image, traced the edges of the image on the vellum and trimmed the clouds down to fit around the pooch.  i'm also slightly obsessed with these shaped cards and i've been making loads of SQUARE cards lately.  watch for them!  :)

here's a close-up of the critter:

fur still isn't one of my strengths, and i wanted to go subtle with an emphasis on that blue flower, so pale worked better for me in this case anyway. 

and that is that!  CLICK HERE to check out the rest of the Mulberry Wood stamp sets (oh my goomie, so cute!), and CLICK HERE for all the gorgeousness from Sheena Douglass.  i should mention that there's also a brand new line of Sheena embossing folders and they're absolutely GORGEOUS.  you'll want to check them out by CLICKING HERE!  :)

hope the day's fab, folks.  i'm crazy swamped with work lately, and putting the pedal to the metal at the gym, so let's hope that 2014 is all it SHOULD be!  see you tomorrow!