Birthday invitations and lesson plans, oh my!

My son will be turning four in about a month, so I'm in the middle of all kinds of party plans.  He will be having an Angry Birds theme party so I created his invitations much the same as the Angry Bird punch art I made several months ago.  Because we're having a pool party, instead of hiding in a fortress of logs, the pig is floating on an inner tube, awaiting his fate.  I used some torn pieces of Pacific Point for the water.  For the inner tube, I punched large ovals, cut a slit in them, and slid in the pig.  The sentiment is from Look Who's Turning, a retired set I keep specifically for my son's party invitations!

New products!  Before I could go whole hog on the new catalog, I had to sell off some retired stuff, which I can't do until the new catalog is out.  So once all that was unloaded, I got a bunch of new goodies this month!  This card uses two new sets, Decorate a Daisy and A Word for You as well as the new Naturals specialty DSP for the background.  I stamped the daisy with Summer Starfish on Primrose Petals and did the reverse with the center.  The banner and sentiment are stamped on Very Vanilla with Primrose Petals.  In order to make the sentiment fit in the swirls of the banner, I had to stamp it twice - first with "for" and then with "you" so I could tilt the stamp.  The card base is Wild Wasabi with a layer of Certainly Celery.

I've been working on some new plans for next year because my schedule is changing up a bit.  This is my take on a really cool lesson I found online involving koi fish.  The left is a picture of it in progress and the right is the finished work.  I colored the fish in with regular old Crayola markers, then went over it with a paintbrush and water to blend it.  Once it dried a bit, I draw my water splash outline around the fish, colored blue right against the fish, and spread it out again with water.  I'm planning to incorporate this into my art appreciation class.  It will fit well into my Japanese art unit.