Hippo Birdie!

It kinda makes me insane that my little sister is already turning 22.  That makes me....much older than that.  I HAD to go all-out for her birthday card, because she gets so many cards from me on a weekly (almost) basis that this one had to be special. 

Although you might not be able to tell, this is NOT an A2 card.  I used a full sheet of 8 1/2 by 11 cardstock and folded it in half, meaning this card is 5 1/2 by 8 1/2.  I used the Paper Studios kraft paper that I used for the mom's birthday cards- I'm kind of in love with Kraft.

The patterned paper is from my KI Memories Classics stack.  I love polka dots, and I think the pink goes really well with the kraft.  Plus, it's enough of a pattern to be interesting, but not enough to overwhelm the images.

All of the animals were cut at 2 inches from Create a Critter.  I have plenty of each type of animal, but I wanted them to look uniform.  The hippo has a tiny gem in the middle of it's flower that I picked up at Michaels (so it's probably Recollections brand).  They're popped up with popdots to make it a little more special.

For the sentiment, I used Cricut's Craft Room and welded together letters from Lyrical Letters.  This font must be really "me," because I seem to go back for it a lot.  I'm really glad that Craft Room came out right when I started to get into the Cricut.  It's been so great.  Even when I'm not planning to use it to cut, I can put shapes on there to see how big they are or see how letters would look before I cut- I might not be doing anything super fancy with it, but I sure use it a lot.