Why is everything so embarrassing at fourteen??

My oldest niece turned 14 in June and I can't believe how much she has changed in the past year or so. The innocent, wide-eyed child has been replaced by a too worldly-wise young lady who thinks she knows more than she does. (Don't they all!!)

She still has moments of delightfulness, though these are somewhat infrequent these days. And everything we do/say is just SO EMBARRASSING!!

I am yet to realise the blessing of marriage and children in my own life so make the most of my brother's and sister's little ones. Three girls (though one now lives in heaven - see my earlier post) and a darling little boy.

This gorgeous fourteen year old niece is actually a step-niece and joined our family as a blonde, 18mth old darling. She is the one who has the greatest hold on my heart as we have walked some incredibly sad days together and she used to have lots of sleep-overs at Aunty Michey's.

I don't get to see nearly as much of her as I'd love to these days, however, I try and get a visit in whenever I can. She and I have both recently discovered that gluten is definitely NOT our friend - so we have some funny conversations about what we can and cannot eat and how we get around it.

Anywho, in my previous post I mentioned that my brother had been away for the first half of the year and missed almost all of the family birthdays.

We mostly waited until he got home and had one big combined family birthday bash at his place. In order we celebrated: Jo's birthday (sister); Mum's birthday; Jo's 1st wedding anniversary; Dan's (twin brother) & my birthdays; Jess' birthday (niece) and Cutie's birthdays (Dan's partner). And now we've just had my other niece's 12th birthday and my brother-in-law's birthday.... and Dad's is coming up...then its the bubba's 1st birthday!! Phew. Christmas will be just around the corner then!!

So I had several cards to make for the party - and after all my fluffing around ended up with really only 1 day to do so!! Thankfully, I had stamped and coloured the images during the week, using my favourite new toys - Copics. But I still had to work out layouts and colour schemes etc.

I knew Jess was definitely not going to be impressed by the 'cutesy' images from TGF, so I used one of the Anya's from the Rain/Snow/Shine set and just hoped that I could make Miss Anya suitably appealing, and not toooooooo daggy. :)

IT WAS A WINNER!! Thankfully these gorgeous Anya images are right up Jess'alley - which is great as I have 5 more images that I can use for her cards now!! Yay!! Plus there are some new stamps that have been released recently that I think may need to find their way into my collection and are perfect for teens!!

My biggest difficulty with this card was finding cardstock that matched the Copic colours/blends I had used. I ended up digging out my retired Bali Breeze DSP and matted it with some random red from Kaisercraft paper that I'd picked up at the scrapbooking shop (I can't remember what the print is on the other side). My flatmate has a corner rounder punch - but I couldn't find it so decided to use my scallop circle punch and was even more pleased with this result than if I'd just had rounded the corners.

Recipe:

Card Stock: SU Soft Sky, SU Bali Breeze DSP, Kaisercraft, SU Whisper White

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Stamps: Anya Rain/Snow/Shine "Rain"

Others: Various Copics ;), Scallop Circle Punch, Various Ribbons from Spotlight, Pearls coloured with a Copic to match (R46), Dimensionals & Cotton Candy Stickles on the umbrella, ella. ;)

Thanks for dropping by.

Michey xxx