Peacock Birthday Wishes

Good afternoon everyone and hope you're enjoying the weekend so far. We've had a lovely, warm and sunny day and have been spending a lot of it in the garden with the bunnies. Our poorly Dill is a little better although it's still a struggle getting him to eat as he's picking at his food at the moment.
I managed to make a card yesterday evening from pieces in my bits box which I'm really pleased about as it's so good to be able to use things up.

I followed the lovely sketch from the first challenge over at Fetch A Sketch, just tweeking it a little as you'll see.

The handsome peacock is from a Kanban stamp set and was stamped with VersaFine Majestic Blue and coloured with Promarkers. I then set the panel on 2 layers, trimming the larger edge of the outer one on one side with a Martha Stewart border punch.
For the main background, I took a square of green parchment card, trimmed the corners with the Martha Stewart loopy punch (I felt this echoes the peacock's tail feathers really well) and then inked all the edges with a turquoise ink pad.
I then followed the sketch layout with a rectangle of card from my bits box which was decorated with my Distress Ink Grunge Background Technique (link to tutorial on side bar) using Broken China, Tumbled Glass and Shabby Shutters DIs and a floral image from the Inkadinkado Garden Delight stamp set. I trimmed the corners with a corner rounder punch.
I cut an oval of green card with my trusty Creative Memories oval cutting set, dry embossed this with the Quickutz retro diamonds folder and inked the edges.
I punched some flowers from a leftover scrap of the floral paper, rounded them out with an embossing ball tool and added them to the card with foam pads. I then set green pearls in the flower centres.
The central border strip is a piece of turquoise grosgrain ribbon and a piece of altered crochet lace which I inked with Shabby Shutters DI and then added green glitter to cover the sticky areas in the holes in the lace.
I finished off with a sentiment from the Polka Doodles Sensational Sentiments stamp set, cut out with a Nestabilities scalloped die, coloured with Promarkers and added to a mat of the teal card used on the main panel.

I'm entering my card in the following challenges:
Fetch A Sketch - Challenge 1 Sketch as above
Card & Scrap - Punches/Dies
Sir Stampalot July Challenge - Anything Goes
The Craft Garden - Use A Bird In Your Creation
Totally Papercrafts - Bingo (My line is 2 down - lace, flowers, dry embossing)

Thanks for looking and enjoy the rest of the weekend,
Fliss xx