18th Birthday card

My late sister's middle son Peter is 18 on Monday - where does time go!! I always struggle with boy's and men's cards, despite having 4 nephews and a brother!  Anyhow, I hope he likes it - my sister would be proud of him - he is at catering college (the same one Jamie Oliver went to no less) - happy birthday, Peter.

I had a couple of near disasters with this card - first of all I traced round the 8 the wrong way round on the patterned paper - spent ages trying to decide if it looked totally wrong before covering the other (right) side. Then when I embossed the "celebrate" the card curled up badly - must be the paper I covered the base card with, I've not embossed on it before. Luckily it seems to have flattened out now!  It also looks a more girly colour on the scan than it does in the flesh - its quite a dark dusky colour; not pink really, honest!

Then I had to decide what else to fill the card with - the numbers were just too big to fit on a 6x6 inch card so this is 8x8 - first time I've done one this big!  I had the champagne bottle, cork and glasses (Hobby Art) which I embossed on scrap card and coloured with tombow pens, and trusty gold krylon pen for the label. . Eventually I decided on the swirly "happy day" stamp (Stampendous) which I use a lot. I drew round the numbers with star dust stickles, cos you can't have an 18th birthday card without a bit of sparkle, can you?!