Yellow Jersey

Hey Peoples!!  Hope your weekend is going good!  I'm still fighting the tail end of what ever crud I caught earlier this week (or what ever the exhaustion decided to turn into).  But!! I'm starting to feel somewhat human again and finally found the energy to put together a birthday card for my boss today.

Now, for those of you who do not following professional bicycling (gasp!!) let me just give you a little background.  In professional cycling, and more importantly, in the Tour de France, the leader of the over all race wears the Yellow Jersey or the Maillot jaune.  It it the most prized possession and in Europe, if you are one so lucky to have worn the Maillot jaune, you are considered a super star (much like how we treat the stars of Hollywood).   You may have heard of Lance Armstrong?  The guy who came back from cancer to win a record 7 Tour de France's? (we will not get into the controversary of whether or not he did it clean or with drugs.....personally, I'd like to believe that since the man looked death once in the eyes, he would not risk his second chance at life by taking something that could possibly kill him.....but I digress!)  Well, my boss is a big fan of Lance's (and cycling in general).  So for his birthday, the other girls and I decided to order the boss man a cycling jersey from Lance's Livestrong foundation (now whether or not you are a fan of Lance personally, the man has probably brought more attention to the fight of cancer in the last 10 years.  And I have read countless stories from other cyclists and those who are not cyclists of how much his foundation helped them find the information and doctors they needed to fight their own battles against this disease.  I think it is a good foundation.  I have supported it in the past and will do so again). 

Again, I digress!! (sorry, the brain is not back to functioning normally again it would appear!) So with the jersery colors in mind, the cycyling theme in mind and the fact that my boss usually gives us VERY generic cards for our birthdays (he finds it amusing to give Christmas cards for those of us with birthday's in December, Easter cards for those in March/April....you get the picture!) this is what I came up with:

 This acutally came together quite quickly.  The image of the bicycle is a stencil from Dreamweaver/Lynell Harlow.  Initially, I did the whole lightbox and stencil routine and then messed around trying to custom color the bike with my copics and the stencil still in place (now, I think that would have worked, IF I had actually tried to hold the stencil in place and had tried to color carefully, instead of doing it really quick).  After doing some investigating (and having a major AH-HAH!! moment after reading Claire Brennan's blog on using the Cuttlebug and stencils) I decided to give Claire's version a try.  I inked up my stencil using SU's Summer Sun.  Then I made my sandwich of the A plate, B plate,  stencil, 120# pure luxury cardstock in white, 4 paper shims, black embossing pad (or the spellbinder tan one) and the other B plate. I ran it thru my neglected Bug (the Big Shot tends to get used more).  I then trimmed the image, rounded the corners, matted it on some basic black , rounded the corners again and adhered that to my 5 3/4" x 6" 120# pure luxury card base.  Stamped the sentiment from SU's It's Your Birthday using my stampamajig  and Archival Jet black ink(and yes, even then, I managed to get it slightly crooked and down a hair lower than I would have liked!).  Pretty CAS and QUICK!!  Not a WOW!! card, but I think it fits the bill for the boss man!

Hope you find some time to create something today before the week is upon us again!! I'm off to work on some mass produced thank you cards for those who helped with Grandparent's day and coach the different basketball teams at the school.  Think today's key word is CAS!! LOL!! 

Thanks for dropping by again!!  Till then.......