Freshly Made Sketches for a 40th birthday

So not only is graduation over but I have also created a new craft space in my home so I'm itching to get crafting again, and what better project to get started with than a birthday card for the friend who introduced me to papercrafting?  The current challenge at Chocolate, Cards & Coffee Challenge is to use numbers, and when I spotted a sketch on Freshly Made Sketches challenge this morning and it called for 2 shapes over a banner or vertical strip on one side, and I immediately pictured the numbers for this card.  I took a little liberty with the challenge sketch in that it did not include the horizontal strip but I already had the elements of  the card done when I realized it and I just couldn't get the balance I wanted without it.  And since I was having so much fun playing in my new craft space I made a coordinating envelope.

details:  For the outside of the card, I started with the For Always paper pack which included the Lagoon cs and to tie it in I swiped the vertical strip of patterned paper with the Lagoon ink pad, and I used the Card Chatter-Birthday stamp set in black.  For the numbers I used a random dull silver paper and black cardstock for the backing and made the cut from the Black Letter alpha that came preloaded when I got my Gypse.  For the inside, I used Lagoon ink to stamp the Love Doily on the card base and black ink to stamp the sentiment from Hooray Bouquet set inside one of the frames from the Frame Flair set.  For the envelope I stamped Lagoon ink on Lagoon CS using a stamp from the first Perfect Fit Frames set and then I used black ink and my friend's intial from the monogram sets, backed with the zip strip from the For Always patterned paper I used for the card.  I hope my friend doesn't mind that I used her birthday present stamp to make her card.  :-)
Happy crafting!  Annette