Happy Birthday Michelle!

Technically yesterday was my oldest daughter Michelle's birthday but today is the day I am going to celebrate it on my blog!! LOL!   Twenty five  years ago I became a mother for the first time and I will never forget that wonderful feeling and the overwhelming amount of love you can feel for a human being.  It is such a special feeling and one that hasn't diminished over time.  Michelle is such a wonderful daughter and is turning into a beautiful woman.  I am so proud of where she is in her life right now and hope and pray for her continued happiness and growth in life!!  I love you Michelle and hope you had a wonderful birthday!!

She and her boyfriend Matt left yesterday on a cruise to Mexico so we celebrated her birthday on Friday of last week.  We went out to lunch at Ruby Tuesdays and had the salad bar and sliders. Here is a picture of Matt and Michelle while we were at lunch!

I made a birthday card for her using some October Afternoon paper and the adorable Unity stamp kit called It's Your Day.  You can purchase this stamp from retailers near you and to find out who is selling it, just click HERE to get the list.

I love the cute and whimsical look that this set gives.  It is so versatile and comes with numbers too!! I used SCS card sketch SC15 for this card.  It was fun to do a shape other than an A2 card for a change! :-)

I stamped the cake once on plain white cardstock and colored it in with Copic Markers.  Then I stamped it again onto the text background paper.  I cute the cake and candles out excluding the flames and glued it to the stamped image on the background.  Then I just colored in the flames and it looks like it is all together again!!

For the word CAKE, I stamped it on plain cardstock and colored it in with Copics too.  Then I paper pieced it onto the stamped image on the card base.  I think the ribbon is from an older MM set I had!  I love the way it came out.  It is fun and festive and girl enough for my feminine daughter!!

I finally decided to give scrapbooking a try again.  It has been way too long and I really do have a lot of photos to scrap!

Unity Stamp Co. has started issuing weekly scrap sketch challenges

 that they call Simple Scrapbook Sketches.  

They are given out on Sundays.  You can see the thread on their forum HERE!

Here is the first sketch that Latisha Yoast designed...

And here is my take on that sketch...

This is also of my daughter Michelle.  She made me promise that I would make a layout of her because she swears that she doesn't have as many as the other kids do!  LOL!! So I had the perfect number of photos to go with this sketch and I just love the candid shots of her.  I chose the DP from the colors that you can see in her bathing suit.  It is from Black Market Paper Society.  You just have to ignore the bright yellow and black life jacket she was wearing while playing water sports!!  LOL!

It might look to someone who doesn't know her that she is angry or upset, but I actually caught her just looking out over the lake with a bit of a squint in her eyes because of the sun.  I think she is just beautiful!!  The title stamp "Fun in the Sun" is from Unity Stamp Co's Beach Days and Sun Rays set.  The text strip below the larger picture of her says "Good Times-Unforgettable Moments-Special Memories-Priceless-Cherish" and it is from Scrapbooking kit called SBC-104 called Unforgettable Moments (also only available from retailers).

The journaling block is made to look like strips of paper which is so fun... and it is from Unity's very first Scrapbooking kit SBC-100 called Le Chic Vintage.  I used the embossing lines on my Crafter's Companion to make the waves.  I embossed and then cut close to the embossed line three times.  Twice with the light blue CoreDinations paper and once from the coordinating dark blue side and then I layered them to make them look like rough water!

Finally I stamped Summertime across the bottom of the page to finish off the border strip.  It is also in the Beach Days and Sun Rays set from Unity.  The flowers were cut from the DP and then placed on top of the matching twill tape from Joann's.

I had so much fun scrapping again.  I will be trying to do these scrapbook sketches each week!! And what I love about Unity and {ippity}  is that they make stamps that are perfect for scrapbooking!!

To see the scrapbooking kits from Ippity, please visit my sales blog HERE.

If you made it through my very long post today then THANK YOU!!  Please have a wonderful day and may  your bucket overflow with the warmth of a summer day on the lake!