50th Birthday Card and Tag

Next week  a good friend of mine celebrates her 50th birthday and I wanted to make her a special card to celebrate. Here's what I came up with.

I wanted a shabby chic/vintage feel to the card and I raided my stash, for anything that would work. Once I had collected everything together I narrowed things down a bit by deciding on the 'A little bird told me' theme. I found the image of the bird in a gorgeous little book of Victorian images I have in my stash and cut it out. The papers are from Paper Cellar and of course they have been distressed using my Ranger distress inks (where would I be without them) before being edged with a gold gilding pen. The bird cage was one I had left over from a previous project and I gilded this to make it match. Like wise the panel with the panel with the '50' on it was the centre section I had cut out of a frame from a previous project. The doily was one of several I liberated from a restaurant when we took my dad out for a birthday meal, they were on the saucers under the coffee cups and I rescued them, when I got them home I found that they were several layers thick so separated them - instant stash! I gilded the doily using the pen to keep to the golden theme. I used a small tag and added the hope wish and dream sentiments to one edge and the flowers to it before tying a bow in gold organza ribbon. The flowers were just from my stash and the delicate gold fern leaves were from a Christmas table decoration. The pins I made from recycled jewellery from a charity shop.
Finally the two butterflies were punched from pearlised paper that had been gilded with the pen.

Having had so much fun making the tag for the card I decided to go on and make a tag for Barbara's gift using more of the silk flowers and the butterflies.

 The leaves for the tag were cut from fabric and stuck down using aslan film.

I gave her the card and gift last night when we went out for a meal, which included excellent food, great company, much  laughter and Greek dancing!! Barbara was very good and resisted opening her card and present until her birthday next week - I hope she likes them and will forgive the copious amounts of birthday confetti concealed in the present.

I am entering the card into the following Challenges
http://fabnfunkychallenges.blogspot.co.uk/ - go green recycled doily, Jewellery and Christmas table decoration.
http://wildorchidchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/ - Bingo Buttons and pins, Blue, and wings (bird and butterflies)

I am entering the tag into the following challenges
http://cupcakecraftchallenges.blogspot.co.uk/ - tag you're it
http://movingalongwiththetimes.blogspot.co.uk/ - Anything but a card