Happy Birthday Julee!!

That's right. As you've probably guessed by now, it's our fearless leader's birthday today. And in case I wasn't loud enough with that graphic, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULEE!!! (hee hee). As you can see above, the Verve Divas and a few Verve fans got together to surprise Julee this morning with this special Blog Hop. If you just stumbled onto my blog, you may want to head over to the Verve Blog and start at the beginning - there's LOTS of fabulous inspiration you won't want to miss!! And then when you're done here, the next stop on the hop is my fellow Verve Diva Jackie Pedro!

When I started thinking about creating a special Birthday card for Julee, I naturally pulled out one of my all-time favorite Verve sets, Happy Days. I mean, if I'm sending Julee a card and little gifty from Maui - it might as well have a fun surfer girl flair, right?


I wanted to make the card at least a little bit girly since it's for Julee (which is always hard for me - I don't do girly well), so I decided to use some girly colors (translation: there's some pink in there). The papers are printed digi papers from the new Alphabet Soup for Girls kit by Zoe Pearn (Sweet Shoppe). I took my cardstock, ink & ribbons colors from those papers. I paper-pieced the hibiscus flowers, which was actually easier than I anticipated and used about a gazillion dimensionals on the card to give it lots and lots of depth. Oh, and the layout? I dug up an old Sweet Sunday Sketch by Karen Giron for that.

I do have a fun little gift package I'm mailing to Julee tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. I know that means she won't get it until about a week after her actual birthday - but see, that was all part of my genius plan. This way, her birthday just gets to last that much longer!! (or something like that...LOL). In reality, it took me awhile to build up my courage to set foot inside Maui's ginormous Sanrio store to pick out a little somethin' somethin' for the birthday girl (just act surprised when it looks like a certain little cartoon cat from Japan puked all over your little gift box Julee!!). Oh man, that place is SCARY. I've still got the heebie jeebies. {shiver}. Oh, and don't go getting your panties in a wad about this Julee and saying I shouldn't have done it - it's not THAT exciting of a gift!! ;-) But seriously, Happy Birthday girl. We love ya!!

And for everyone else, you might want to head on over to Jackie's Blog and see what amazing eye candy she has to share with us, she's the next stop on the hop. I'm sure we won't be disappointed!!