An udder birthday?

Wow, with the world opened up in the internet, I'm meeting all kinds of people who share my birthday month! Happy Birthday to my fellow March babies! I'm moving on to a new month with this card, though. My friend Melissa's birthday is in April. Since I won't have much time in April to craft, I am trying to get both March and April projects done now. It's slow going, but I'm working on it. I guess it would help if I made a list on actual paper, rather than the notepad that lives in my head (and tends to disappear on occasion, like the rest of my memories can sometimes do!). That's another thing to worry about doing, though, and I just haven't quite gotten to it yet.

I just won this stamp set over on Anita Be Stampin's Challenge blog. You really need to go play over there. She has great sketch and color challenges, and the prize is an awesome gift card to use in her store. Her store carries both digis and rubber stamps. When I first got a rubber stamp set from Anita's store, I could not believe: 1) how fast she shipped it; 2) how cutely (is that a word?) in which she packaged it (I love pink polka dot tissue paper); 3) how deeply etched the rubber is; and 4) how cleanly they stamp. Totally worth every penny. Each set comes with sentiments and an image or two. I now have multiple sets from her store (5, I think?), plus some digis. Such cute stuff!

Here's my card for the challenge this week, which is a sketch. You need to head over to the blog to see the sketch, though. Go on, get over there. No, no, wait! Look at my card first, THEN get over there. I'll shut up now so you can see. Here you go:

I used Nesties labels 11 to cut out the sentiment. Papers are Cosmo Cricket. I added shine to the balloon and party hat with glossy accents. Since I love buttons, I had to add a few of those to the card, too. The image is colored with copics. I found this awesome tutorial on 7 Kids College Fund to show me how to make the cloud background. Needless to say, I need some practice, but it was fun to try. I am slowly but surely learning how to make various backgrounds. Dana taught me how to do the dotted one. Someone else (sorry, I can't recall who it was!) showed me how to make the shadows, and now I learned how to make clouds. Fun!

So, anyway, head on over to Anita's challenge blog and check out the sketch for yourself! It's okay...you can go now. I won't pull you back to listen to more chatter. At least, not yet.