Thank You Friend

I have a very lovely friend, that I met through Zac's Playcentre. She is rather a wizard with a pair of scissors and has cut both my hair and my sons just recently. So I thought I'd make her a thank you card to show our appreciation. I must say, the idea was rather inspired by coming across a fab digi image which to be fair is a rather stunning likeness of my lovely pal! Right down to the hairdryer!! This funky gal is by Etsy store FaeryInk and is called Mandy the Stylist.

I had first coloured the hair in a warm brown, but before I could give it to my friend, she had her hair dyed red! So I went back over the brown with a deep red and was pleased that it came up so well. My pal has stunning green eyes, so I had fun colouring the eyes to match. It's not clear in the pic, but I used a couple of different greens to try and show the hazel flecks. Hard to do, but fun trying! I didn't want to do the hairdryer the typical black, which is so common for hairdressers to have, as all the detail would be lost, so I used my slate Promarker with a bit of red thrown in for good measure. I kept the background very plain, with only a faint grey shadow around the image and some 'ground' to anchor the image. Though a little 'bling' was in order of course, so I used my Xmas Red Stickles on her shoes (because who doesn't love Ruby slippers!) and some Glossy Accents on the hairdryer heart. Her earrings, belt buckle and bangles were coloured with my silver Letraset Metallic Marker.

The fabulous papers are Funky Hand papers. I was asked recently by my lovely blog buddy Lou Daubney to do some Guest Designing for Funky Hand and once I recovered from the shock and awe, I of course said ooh yes please! I've used the gorgeous red paper which is currently this months freebie paper and paired it with a grey spotty paper from the Steam Funk set, which worked so well with the colours I'd chosen for the image. I love this combo of papers and kept the design very CAS to let both the image and the papers feature. I really like the look of distressed edges on CAS designs, so I used my Tim Holtz Tool to distress the edges of the papers. The Steam Funk paper set is absolutely brilliant and I'm going to be back soon with another make using these. You can check them out here on the Funky Hand site. 

I edged the sentiment with the freebie paper offcuts, which I think worked really well. I tried the sentiment all over the page before settling with it here. It didn't look quite right down in the bottom right corner which I'd first thought I'd place it. It was just getting lost. So top left, just seemed the right fit. How many times do you play with your layout before you get the right fit? I think I take longer just deciding on the design layout than any other aspect of making the card. This fab sentiment is actually a freebie from Birdie Brown stamps and worked so perfectly for this make. I'd toyed with the idea of creating a sentiment that said 'you blow me away' because of the hairdryer. But I always slightly cringe when I read sentiments like that. Bird images with 'your so tweet' as the sentiment. Really? It doesn't actually mean anything! I think it's silly, so I didn't want to go down that road of a bad pun for the sake of it. But I am known to drop the occasional 'you rock' into conversation, so this fun Birdie Brown sentiment was a much better fit for me. It was exactly what I wanted to say! So I was chuffed and I think it finishes the card brilliantly.

Well that's me for tonight. My lil' girlie is off on her first school camp tomorrow, so I have an early start, making sure she's all sorted. It's been a hugely busy weekend with lovely outings with pals we've not seen for a while and a wonderful family celebration dinner too, so I've been chasing my tail the last few days trying to keep up with everything. Hope you've had a fabulous weekend. Pop in again soon. I have some fun stuff to share and a little candy coming up too. Big hugs, Wends xxx

Challenge Entries:

Passion For Promarkers: #242 ~ So Sentimental
Sister Act Card Challenge: #52 ~ Anything Goes
Whimsy Stamps Challenge: #70 ~ Anything Goes
Inky Impressions Challenge: #154 ~ Dots & Stripes