Card Transformation

Papertrey Ink is celebrating their 11th Anniversary this month (can you believe it?!).  As part of the festivities, they are hosting a Card Transformation challenge: transform an old card.  As soon as I saw the challenge, I KNEW which card I was going to transform.  It was already in my pile of things to fix/use up.  Here it is:

This was one of the first cards I created back when I started blogging back in 2009.  Hooo, boy!  I mean, it's not bad, but rather boring.  And better than that, the different layers had lost their adhesive, so it was falling apart.  It was in definite need of a make-over!  And this is what it looks like now:

I didn't take away a single thing, but the change is pretty drastic, I think.  I created the pattern on the base layer with PTI's "Guide Lines 2" pulling color from the image and adding some gray for contrast.  Then I embossed the gray layer, added a loopy border die along the thin pink layer, matted the image on some dark pink card stock with punched corners and restamped a "happy birthday" sentiment (stamped on a die-cut strip that was in my bits and pieces stash and matted on some mulberry paper that was also in the stash).  I finished it off with some pearls in the upper right corner and added some glitter pen to the flowers in the image.

I also added the gel glitter pen to the center of the pink elements in the background.  You can see the sparkle in the above photo.
This was a really fun challenge, and now I have a birthday card that I will actually send.  Now I might be motivated to revamp a couple more of those old cards I have lying around.

Supplies:
Stamps: PTI "Guide Lines 2" and "Hands of Time" sentiment; the image is Inkadinkado I believe and the original sentiment might be as well.
Dies: PTI loopy border die
Punch: Marvy Uchida notched corner punch
Cuttlebug embossing folder

Challenges:
Papertrey Ink--transform an old card
Creative Knockouts #252--birthday wishes
Pixie's Crafty Workshop #319--anything goes with snippets (transforming an old card may be the ultimate snippets use)
Crafty Calender--2 or more layers
Cuttlebug Mania--hip hip hooray (birthday)
Cards Galore--anything goes