A birthday card for a special friend

Here is a card I made for a friend turning the BIG 40!! Happy Birthday Nicky! Nicky's birthday is also Christmas day, but her family went to a very special effort to make a separate celebration for this very special birthday!!

It uses the cake stamp from the Pretty Princess set. The card base is Purely Pomegranate, stamped in Basic Black with the Polka Dot background. I ran a strip of black cardstock through my crimper, and mounted this on some whisper white to give it 'pop' from the background.
I used Watercolour Wonder Crayons in Bold Brights and an Aquapainter brush to colour the Stazon stamped image on Whisper White. It's easy to get an authentic watercolour effect by drawing fine lines of colour with dry crayon onto the image, then blending and 'melting' the crayon with the water brush, spreading out the colour as desired.
The panel was mounted on black to match the dots and crimped panel. The Happy Birthday sentiment is exactly the right size to go into the Square Scallop punch in the Summer Mini. I finished it off with a tie of the Pomegranate wide satin ribbon that was in the Spring Mini. I'd been lovingly holding onto my remaining piece until the right project came along, and this was it!

Off to photograph some more projects with my NEW CAMERA!!!! I'd been dropping hints for a while, and had been using my pretty nice point and shoot digital camera for over three years, but have been longing for a proper digital SLR camera to replace my Pentax film SLR, retired due to the cost of feeding it!

When Kim expressed interest in shopping for a new camera for her Africa trip, DH decided that it would be a nice 'surprise' for me to have one too. So, we are now both proud owners of a Canon 450D DSLR! I am still very much on auto settings, but at least being digital, I can play and experiment without undue expense! Back soon with some results I hope (says she who has not yet downloaded from the new camera...)