Ahead of the Game With a Beautiful Ride!

Hello! I am so very excited to share today's card! Not because it is some super amazing creation, but because I actually have my DD's birthday card done more than two weeks before her birthday! Can I get a Woop! Woop!?  Usually I'm still putting the last minute touches (or just beginning) the day or two before...  So color me happy that this is finished and I'm pretty pleased with it too.  

I have so many blogging friends that create these amazing scenery backgrounds for their cards and I'm always more than a little envious-still am!  However, I decided to put on the big girl panties and try making my own background.  It's not super awesome, but it doesn't totally suck either, and I know that DD will like it regardless.  You see, there is a little story behind this one.

DD#1 turned 16 during softball and musical season; after that came the part time job, and she was so swamped with everything that she wasn't even concerned about not having a drivers license.  I think I was more put out by doing all of the driving than she was about not driving.  At the end of the summer DH found a super great deal on DD#1's dream car-a VW beetle...and get this...it's a convertible!!! What?!  It does however have a manual transmission (which she is still attempting to master) and needed a bit of work.  So here we are in the middle of winter, her almost 17, and still not able to completely enjoy her freedom.  How does this relate to the card other than the Bug?  When she saw the stamp set Beautiful Ride, she went crazy! She wanted me to get it for her and couldn't believe I wasn't going to order it. "But Mom, you could use it on the scrapbook pages for the pictures of the car!", "Look at all the cool things you could make with this!", and promoting every other creative idea that popped in her head. Really laying it on thick...  So I did what any caring and loving mom does and told her no.  Then I secretly ordered it and hid it from her, because that's just how I am!  Then while she was at my parents helping them on the farm, I made her card, photographed it, and hid that too!

I am really looking forward to seeing her face when she opens the envelope and sees her card.  I even did a little selective inking of the stamp to turn it into a soft top, and added a sweet Shadow head peeking out the back because Labs love car rides too!  So now, even though she can't go cruising with the top down, she can look at this and remember that summer will be here before we know it!

Like I said earlier, my landscape skills need a lot more practice and my sunny corner looks more like a grade-schoolers sunshine, but I'm getting there and isn't art all about the journey anyway? How metaphorically perfect is that? Oh...I think I may need an intervention on my use of the Wink of Stella brush... I covered the car and the sun with it...but it's so very sparkly and pretty! My precious!! Oops, was that out loud?!

Now I just have to patiently wait for her birthday (and remember where I hid the card).  Maybe I'll even let her use the stamp set... After all, it is her birthday...

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a marvelous week!

Card Recipe: Paper-whisper white, bashful blue (ret), basic black, Stamp Sets-Beautiful Ride, Happy Home, Ink-assorted markers, memento tuxedo black, silver sharpie, Accessories-pastels, colored pencils, dimensionals, Wink of Stella