Someone at work asked me to make a graduation card for her daughter and one of my customers had asked for graduation card ideas. So I made up this card tonight and thought I'd post it quick. I'm sure a lot of you have graduation parties to go to in the next couple of weeks. This is that time of year.

Materials used: Cardstock: barely banana, basic black and very vanilla. The card was generated from my digital studio using Go, Graduate digital stamp. This is a very versatile stamp - I also own it in clear rubber. You can use this stamp for either a male or female graduate. I then also printed out an additional hat from the stamp and cut it out and layered it onto summer sun cardstock and cut it out and attached it with dimensionals, a silver brad and silver cording. I, of course, have to always add some bling so I put a strip of clear glitter sticky paper across the middle.

I hope my card inspires you.

My sister Chris sent me some pictures of a bird that she started noticing in her back yard. Last Saturday she found an unfinished birdhouse in her basement and so she took it outside and hung it in her back yard. Within 2 hours, she started noticing this beautiful blue bird hanging out in her back yard and sure enough, both the male and female took up residency in the birdhouse. She ran and grabbed her new Cannon camera and started taking pictures. When she sent them to me by email today, I knew I had to make a digital layout. This is an American Sparrow and the male is this gorgeous blue while the female looks like a regular sparrow - brown tones. So they are now her backyard tenants. This is a template from Basic Grey that I picked up a few weeks ago. Instead of background paper on the layout, I loaded the photo she took of one of the birds sticking their head out of the hole of the birdhouse and lowered the opacity so it makes it look like an overlay almost. Enjoy and find time to play.