Jazzy Feline Duet

This is the first of three cards my boss recently ordered. One of her good friends, a Minister, is turning 60 later this month! She wanted to celebrate Vivian's birthday with a very special card. I was given a list of possible things to feature on this card: jazz, cats, golf, dragonflies, pink, wine, Vivian, other birthday things. Wow, that is a long list to choose from! First I thought about the reasonable combinations. I couldn't feature cats with golf obviously. LOL Cats could be in a garden with dragonflies but I couldn't find any digital dragonfly images. Jazz and wine definitely go together but it would've been a little difficult to illustrate based on my love for scene cards. I was looking at cat images when I came across these piano cats and knew it was the one. It was so perfect!

This is my first time using a digital image. I purchased this one called Piano Cats from Squigglefly. If you haven't been to their site you should check it out! They have some really wonderful images. Of course the card was going to have a lot of pink because Vivian is crazy about pink. I really wanted to put a wine glass on top of the piano but left it off in the end because it wouldn't have fit in with the final layout of this card. I had to colour this image twice because I originally intended for the piano to be black but messed up the shading so badly that it looked like a rotting piano that no music could come out of. LOL Anyway, I decided to go with lighter shading the second time around and although I have a long way to go with Copics I think I did an okay job on this. I'm quite pleased with the way it ended up. I added Stickles to glitter up the cushion on the bench and crystal effects on the keys and top of the piano. Lastly, I used my Atyou Spica glitter pen to trace over the Happy Birthday script.

The best compliment of all was when my little guy saw the card, pointed at it with his chubby little finger and said, "Ca-!" :D

Sources: SU textured whisper white cardstock; Halcraft smooth white cardstock; Q-Print smooth white cardstock; Paper Reflections pink cardstock; SU textured basic gray cardstock; DCWV sweet stack; Fiskars Threading Water border punch; Fiskars Nostalgia corner edger; Squigglefly Piano Cats digital image; Copics; PSX Diamond Stickles; ICG alphabet punch set; SU brads; SU Crystal Effects; Imaginisce All Kinds of Happy; SU Basic Gray ink; SU large oval punch; SU scallop oval punch; dimension squares; Straight 'N' Narrow ribbon; Atyou Spica glitter pen