Hi, crafty friends! I have some super exciting news to share. A few weeks ago, Lee Holland had a design team call. It wasn’t widely advertised (only four spots were up for grabs), but I have the best crafty friend in the world (Liz Vefall), and she sent me a link. I dropped Lee a quick line saying I was interested in joining his team and he responded right away and said yes. I was over the moon, I love his images. And even though I may be on enough design teams as it is, I just couldn’t pass up this opportunity.

My first card as a Lee Holland design team member HAD to be a birthday card for the wonderful friend that sent me the link, thereby letting me know that this amazing opportunity even existed.

I first fell in love with Lee’s images because of his dragons, but all his critters are adorable, and I thought this woodland squirrel was perfect for this birthday card. Liz and I often go for walks in the woods (when there’s no ice or snow), and we’ve spotted a few squirrels on our little outings.

She loves teal, so I knew just what color to use for the balloons. I made sure to print the image towards the bottom left corner of my quarter panel of X-Press It blending card, which is what I use for nearly all my Copic coloring. I used the largest die in the A2 Stitched Rectangles STAX 1 die set from My Favorite Things to give my panel a slight trim and that faux stitch edge I love so much, before adhering it directly to a card base I created from Tropical Teal cardstock from Papertrey Ink.

I die cut the letters to spell HURRA three times from the same color cardstock using the Connected alphabet die set from My Favorite Things. I stacked them for dimension and stability and adhered them to the right of the top balloon.

I also stamped a couple of sentiments from the A06 stamp set from Norsk Stempelblad AS onto strips of Sea Glass cardstock from Concord & 9th using Caribbean Sea ink from My Favorite Things. I added a few additional strips behind each and glued them to the card, before finishing off the card with a few sequins from the Seashore mix from Little Things from Lucy’s Cards.

I used a lot of colors for the coloring of this. I used 16 colors for the squirrel, which is kind of nuts (pun intended).