Enjoy the Things that Really Matter

Hello everyone!

I want to extend a big welcome and thank you to my latest followers!  I'm so very grateful for each and every one of you!  I hope everyone is having a great week so far...almost the weekend :o).  Hope you get to spend it doing something you love.

Every once in a while, I get asked to make a custom card for someone, and today I have one of these cards to share.  This is a retirement card for a lady that my MIL worked with and all the gals in her office wanted a special card for the occasion.  Here is what I came up with:

Now, I know this isn't a typical retirement card, but this lady has a little grandson and a little dog who are the centre of her universe, so I think it works really well for her.  I used my absolute favourite Edwin - Edwin with airplane from the Magnolia Princes and Princesses collection and masked it together with the log.  Since she has a small dog, I opted to mask the dog from 'Fishing Fun' by Gillian Roberts for Stampavie into the little scene.  If you are not familiar with this image, it is of a little boy fishing and the dog is snuggled up beside him.  Not the easiest of tasks, but thank goodness for my stamp-a-ma-jig!  I am very happy with how it turned out and I think the two styles work nicely together.  The images were stamped with black Stazon on 300g hot pressed watercolour paper and coloured with distress inks (frayed burlap, weathered wood, stormy sky, black soot, antique linen, pumice stone, fired brick, walnut stain, scattered straw, and peeled paint) and watercolour pencil for skin.

I decorated the inside to match the cover, but used a lighter paper for writing on.

The tag is made from Magnolia's vintage tag Doohickey and pulls out to reveal the sentiment, which I made in Word since I didn't have one that was appropriate for the occasion.  It is made using a bunch of text boxes crammed in together :).  If you click on the image, you can see the puppy's tag is very sparkly, courtesy of my clear atyou Spica pen.  I absolutely love this pen!

Other supplies:
The card and papers are all Stampin' Up, except for the striped one which was in my stash and I'm not sure from which manufacturer.   All the edges were distressed and inked with frayed burlap.
White lace and blue ribbon from my stash.  The lace on the tag is from Kaiser - it started out white, but I died it blue.  The Doily is from Little Yellow Bicycle and the flowers were all white flowers from Pretty Petals.  The rose was coloured blue with Tattered Angels glimmer mist in bubbles and then the edges were inked with DI weathered wood.  The other two were inked with weathered wood and frayed burlap.  The leaves are a Magnolia Doohickey.

I would like to enter this card in the following fun challenges:

Crafting Life's Pieces for the beautiful sketch, which I rotated and flipped
TOMIC - anything goes (and it's their first anniversary celebration!  Congratulations!!)
Magnolia Down Under - seeing double (I've doubled up on the lace, the ribbon, the leaf Doohickeys and the little blossoms)
Midweek Magnolias - anything goes

Thanks for stopping by today and thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!  I love reading them and love the chance to visit you too!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hugs,

Dawn