Happy New... Baby!

Hello everyone... hope you're all settling into 2019, I know I am; it's like the Holidays never happened, lol.
The card I have to share today celebrates a New Beginning too... one of our work colleagues (a scheduler for one of the companies we contract for) had a beautiful bub called Ryker and I made this card in a box to celebrate the event

I love this style of card, they fit flat for posting (and/or...hopefully... storing as a keepsake!) yet provide a "lot" of card for your buck when open.  
I used this gorgeous Lee Holland digi called Elephant with Flower, available here, coloured with Prismacolor pencils... I love the soft pastel effect pencils give for baby images.  There's a little bit of glittery goodness in the flower centre.... just because :-)
I fussy cut the image and mounted it on little grassy mounds made using a Dienamics border die (Grassy Edges, I think)
I cut the letters of Ryker's name from the same blue card used for all the matting (sorry can't remember the die set, think it's Cottage Cutz) and added them to acetate "stalks" at the back of one of the "cross bars", leaving them dancing merrily away behind the image to the left.  On the other side I added a cute little acrylic blue dragonfly to balance it out.
I used multicoloured cube beads to spell out the word Welcome and strung that up on twine on the back upright panel.
The Ten Little Fingers verse on the front flap is from a Kaisercraft 6" pad "Lullaby"

The rest of the papers are just gorgeous in real life... they're from First Edition's It's a Boy pad, there's lots of fine detail and plenty of foil.  I actually used five different patterns of this paper, but that was because I only had a few snippets left of the butterfly pattern, they all go together so well though that it doesn't look like you've run out of one pattern!  It does mean I can enter the challenge at Pixies Snippets Playground, always a bonus :-)
 I added a velcro closer to the bellyband covered that with a rectangular panel and decorated that with a cute laser cut wooden rocking horse.
I added little silver flatbacks to every corner of every panel... which took a surprisingly long time!
As I do with all these cards I put the jotting panel on the back, I added a small panel of patterned paper at the bottom trimmed with some spotty gros grain ribbon from my stash
 .... and THAT's it for Ryker's card.  I'd like to enter in the following challenges

The Paper Shelter and Fab'n'Funky Challenges have New Beginnings

Cuttlebug Mania, Die Cut Divas and Cute Card Thursday have Something New

Crazy 4 Challenges has Favourite Type of Card (shape, theme etc) I LOVE cards in a box

Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge Use Patterned Paper

As You Like It,  Through the Craftroom Door, Digi Choosday, Crafty  Creations, Crafting With Friends Challenge #77, Li'l Patch of Crafty Friends, Polkadoodles, A Perfect Time to Craft, Creatalicious Challenges, Crafting With Attitude and Corrosive Challenge All have Anything Goes

Ona personal note, thanks to those who left me best wishes regarding my little friend Rocky... he is still with us; he had surgery last week and came through it really well; we did do an assessment re quality of life with the vet and he scored surprisingly high - a long way off euthenasia being "the" only answer.  Of course it may eventually come to that, but for the time being he is ticking along quite nicely (about which I am very happy and much relieved!) 

Until next time, Happy Crafting, Donna