Happy 33rd Birthday Jimmy!

Today is my brother's birthday and this is the card I made him.

There is a little story behind this card. For the past year, I have stopped making cards for my family & friends. This is due to my health. I have made the odd one her and there, but for the most part I have bought my cards this year.

I have at least 2 birthdays every month and some months are as high as 9 to 12 birthdays in one month. Then you add holidays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, babies and so forth and so forth and a lot of my time is spent making cards.

This is why I gave myself permission to take time off from making my cards this year. I am working on balancing family, friends, work, scrapbooking, photography & me time and I hope to have a rough plan in place for the New Year. I am realistic and I know my life balancing plan will take some time to work out all the kinks, but I won't stop trying to come up with the "perfect" balance.

Well, I just couldn't buy my brother a card this year. Last year I went to make him a card with this fisherman image from the Greeting Farm. I was so excited because it kind of looks like him. To my dismay, I realized that I didn't own it. This was one of those stamp sets that I had talked myself out of.

Well, I was quite disappointed. So, the next time I had put a Greeting Farm order in, I made sure that I bought this stamp set. I am so glad that I did because I love this card. Yes, I was up very late making it and of course at the very last possible moment, but the process was so therapeutic. I lost track of time in my scrap room and it felt good.

I used Basic Grey's Pyrus 6 x 6 paper pack, Core'dinations Cardstock and some miscellaneous brads from my stash. I played with one of my new Nestabilities - Wonky Square, my sewing machine and I had fun free-hand cutting up my scrap pieces of paper for my tree. As I have already mentioned, the fisherman is from The Greeting Farm and all the sentiment stamps are from CC Designs.

I used the following Copic Markers to colour in my image: Hair - E44, E47 & E25; Skin - E00 & E000; Shirt - T3 & BG72; Hat & Pants - E57; Hankerchief - W3, YG95 & BG99 and the Fish - W1, E43, E40 & E34.