Polka Doodles Challenge while grateful to Mo Manning!

Polka Doodles have a challenge currently for an age related birthday card.     I have disobeyed all the usual rules for aesthetics and it shows BUT I love this image and I am enormously grateful to Mo Manning of Mo's Digital Pencil for allowing me to alter an image to suit this birthday card for my widowed American Uncle who will be 90 on Sunday and whose card is going to be very late given that the last Christmas post for the States was ages ago.

My cousins advised me back in the summer that it was their dad's 90th in December and whereas I don't normally send him a birthday card I thought I would for this big occasion and I'm really miffed that it's going to be late.   It got stuck on my to do list behind all of the Christmas cards and I had insufficient time to really make it work.

My uncle Steve is a big cribbage player.   A healthy lifestyle, lots of walks, a recent romance (yup - that's right) and daily cribbage is what has kept him going for all these years.  My cousin sent me a photo of a cribbage board which I printed onto Kraft and mounted on foam to give it some dimension.    She also told me where to place the "pegs" which are pearls.    Apparently, and I have no idea how to play the game, if there is a Jack facing upwards and Uncle Steve has four 5s in his hand then he will win the game from the position where his pegs are placed on the board.  My original intention was just to use the board and some cards but however I layed out the elements it just looked so empty.  I trawled the web for images playing cards and couldn't find one but I do own Mo's absolutley fabulous "Darn It" image and I could see that he would make a good card player if only he wasn't sewing!!!   I e-mailed Mo and asked if she would give permission for me to alter the image and she oh-so-kindly agreed!    I am really pleased with how it turned out.  It took me forever to make the accompanying embellishments because my playing cards looked grey and having put my Stampin Up paper, the image, the Fiskers sentiment and the other bits and bobs together, my card isn't quite balanced but I'm sure my Uncle will like it anyway - just on the basis of the image!