Birthday celebration ....

.... Afternoon!  I hope everyone is having a fun weekend.  My friend Heather came over yesterday and we spent the day catching up on news.  I showed her around my craft room and some of my new(ish) fountain pens and inks. It's so nice to have friends who share my love of all things stationery!!  Today has been a bit quieter and I've been able to spend some time actually crafting.  I made a very CAS birthday card:

Stamps: Happy Little Stampers - Born to be Wild; MFT - Bitty Birthday Wishes
Inks: Distress - Tea Dye, Brushed Corduroy, Pumice Stone; Gina K - Black Onyx; Versafine - Onyx Black
Accessories: White Lustre Card; Clear Embossing Powder; Joggles Stencil - Punchinella Quintet Stars; Staedtler Fine Line Pen

I'm still working on building up my stash of birthday cards concentrating on more masculine cards.  I'm submitting this one to AAA Cards - AAA#148 where they have a sketch with an option of animals, CAS on Friday - CASOF#162 where they want us to use a stencil, and Cardz 4 Guyz - C4G#227 where they have a theme of celebration.

I stamped the zebra directly on the card and heat embossed with clear powder. I then masked off the card to create a stripe and also the zebra.  I used a star stencil and distress inks to create the stripe. After removing the masks I added borders either side of the stripe. I finished with a simple sentiment. On the inside, I simply stamped the zebra again and added a fun greeting.

I woke up silly early this morning so I spent a while watching a couple of videos - the STAMPtember product release from Simon Says Stamp, and Jennifer's McGuire's video showing some lovely samples using the new release.  Today is a day when I wished I still lived in Michigan - my shopping basket would have been so full!! I'm going to try and post everyday this month to celebrate STAMPtember!!  That's all for now.