Sugar Skulls and a Tricky Bird

Hey y'all, how's your weekend going?  Ryan and I are going to see the Paw Patrol movie for the second time here in about an hour, but first I want to share a card.  Here it is:

I've talked before about how I send at least one card a week to my friend Beth, who has been fighting stage 4 metastatic breast cancer for TWO YEARS.  She is a fierce warrior, to say the least.  Last year she asked if I could make her a card with a Dia de los Muertos card, so I had to go find some stamps and/or dies to do that and sent her a sugar skull card last year.  Her birthday is coming up soon so I had to do more sugar skulls for her, and I even found a Baylor University mug with sugar skulls on it (we were roommates at Baylor for a semester).  Take a look at this week's Freshly Made Sketch:

I rotated the sketch to accommodate the skulls (I tried it vertically but my card would have had to be at least an inch taller).  As per usual, I paired the sketch with the Color Throwdown:

I used Call Me Clover, Pumpkin Pie, and Azure Afternoon for my colors.  A while back when Blueberry Bushel was an In Color, SU! had embossing powders in that crop of In Colors and I bought them.  I haven't used them much but occasionally something comes up and I remember that I have them, the Blueberry Bushel EP on black cardstock looks pretty good with Azure Afternoon.

I had started this card on Thursday but didn't get it done that day, so I finished it up yesterday morning and then Ryan wanted to get in on the action.  So he made a card too:

He wanted to make a Halloween card for his dad from him and Peking, his #1 pal who is a duck stuffie.  The closest I could get was this chick from Trick or Tweet, and that was good enough for Ryan.  And the Pineapple Punch embossing powder looks pretty good here!  (It was still out on my table from when I used the Blueberry Bushel one.). Ryan did all the stamping and die cutting, and I even helped him learn how to use the embossing tool.

Here he is writing the message on the inside.

I usually help him with spelling, though he's getting better with that, and he does the writing with a minimum of arguing about it.  I hope the hubs is saving these for when we're all reunited next year, because when Ryan is 30 I think he'll enjoy seeing things like this.  D'awwww.

Supplies, sugar skulls card:
Stamps:  Afterthoughts, all others from Hero Arts
Ink:  Versamark, Pumpkin Pie
Paper:  Azure Afternoon, Basic Black, Pumpkin Pie, Call Me Clover, Thick Basic White, Painted Seasons DSP
Accessories:  Blueberry Bushel EP, white EP, Stitched Rectangles dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals

Supplies, bird card:
Stamps:  Trick or Tweet
Ink:  Versamark, Memento Tuxedo Black, Pumpkin Pie
Paper:  Pineapple Punch, Pumpkin Pie, Basic Black, Thick Basic White
Accessories:  Stylish Shapes dies, Pineapple Punch EP, Dimensionals