Adorable Birthday Animals

I am so beyond happy that it is finally Friday!
What a not so grand week I've had...was sick over the weekend (which caused me to miss my Paper Makeup DT creation...), computer crashed on me Monday, internet broke on Tuesday, Wednesday was overloaded with catching up from the last several days...and the list goes on..

But I'm happy everything is settled back down to normal and I can show you this awesome new Sami Stamps release, because let me tell you, it's adorable!!

Sami drew up some Birthday Animals for this release, and I had a blast creating with them!

This first image is called Birthday Surprise and I just love it!  The cake looks so delicious, and the sweet little kitty on top is so cute!  I went girlie on this card...couldn't get the idea of a pink cake out my head so I just decided to roll with it.

I colored up the cake with my ShinHan markers and added some glitter pen to the platter and candles, and some liquid pearls to the dotted layers.

I used a sentiment stripe from Beccy's Place and printed it on vellum.  To color the little flower, I flipped the vellum over and drew on the back.  It was a technique I watched a video on a few weeks ago, and they made it into like a stained glass image.  Not sure mine turned out that way, but I thought it worked well coloring on the back instead of smearing the ink on the front.
Then I just layered that onto a MS Lace Edge punched border and put everything together!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    As You Like It #15-Spots or Stripes? (I love spots!!  As you can see from both of my cards :) )
    Card Mania #33-Anything Goes
    Creative Creations #23-Sparkle and Shine

Since I went super girlie with my kitty, I went in the opposite direction for this card.

Isn't he cute!!  This is Balloon Puppy.  So freaking cute!  And you can get him free with any purchase from the Sami Stamps store!!

I colored him in with my pencils instead of my markers.  Have to pull them out once in awhile still :)

I used my ShinHan's to add the little dots around him though.  I coordinated up some brown and green scraps and put them all together with some light green twine wrapped behind the image.  And I couldn't help myself with the sentiment...he just had the curious look on his face that was perfect!  So I printed it off and flagged the ends to finish off the card.

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    Artistic Inspirations #67-Use a Sentiment
    Sunday Sketch and Stamp #182
    That Craft Place-Sentiment

Check out the rest of the design teams amazing creations on the Sami Stamps blog!  And remember we have our Clean and Simple challenge going on this month, so join in the fun!!