Happy Birthday Mermaid

My daughter woke up yesterday morning, and asked me if I could make a card for her friend's birthday (her party was later that evening).  First I had her look through the bucket of cards I've already made to see if she found one she liked...guess what, she didn't.  So, out came the paper and Gypsy and I got to work.  She mentioned that her friend liked mermaids, and I just happened to have the Life is a Beach handbook memorized (since I've been using it for school stuff).  I knew just what I wanted to do. 

Using the Just a Note cartridge as a template, I welded together some squares from George and Basic Shapes and a liner from Wild Card to make the card base.  Then, using the Don Juan cartridge, I welded the shadow for "Happy Birthday" to the card base (after flipping the letters so they would be correct once the card was folded.  I did the same for the base of the mermaid on the other side of the card. 

Once all the pieces were cut, assembly was super easy.  I did hand cut some rectangles to add to the sides before adding the letters and mermaid...felt like it needed a little something.  The mermaid was finished off by embossing her hair (with my Cuttlebug and the divine swirls folder), adding adhesive pearls to her waist, and stickling (yes, that is a word, lol) her top, flower and fin.  I also added just a tiny bit of chalk to her cheeks...what a difference it makes.

I think this might be my new favorite card.  Now that I've set it up, it should be really easy to switch out the main image to fit any birthday.