December birthdays old and new

A very special friend will be 70 tomorrow and this is the card I've made for her: I always make a special point of making something as different from a Christmas card as I can, so this seaside theme fits the bill perfectly. I struggled with it but was finally happy - it was the inclusion of the bright yellow that tipped the balance even though it's among my least favourite colours. I love the quotation which is an old PSX stamp I managed to track down on eBay last year and it's cut with the beaded oval Nestability . The sketch of the woman is by Stampin' Up! cut with a small classic square Nestie and matted using my new, indispensible tool, the Perfect Layers ruler. Highly recommended, it's so simple to use and results in perfectly even mats without any measuring. And no, this isn't a sales advert: I have no axe to grind other than being one very happy crafter!

Well, there's a new birthday added to the calendar for December: Holly Louise was born on Wednesday 21st and this is the card for her proud parents. The teddies by PSX are my favourite go-to stamp for baby cards, coloured with chalks and mounted on pink which I promise you is not as lurid IRL as it appears here! And the piece at the bottom cut with a Nestie Fancy Tag die really did come from the same piece of card although it looks very different. The holly background is shaded green so I 'm not blaming the scanner for colour variation there, and although you can't see it the insert sheet has its edges decorated with a Fiskars holly border punch.

I should be back next week with the final card for this year - a friend's birthday is on New Year's Eve.