A first for me: quilled birthday card in Welsh!

The Welsh language has always been a bit of a mystery to me. As an English speaker living in England, it's easy to overlook the other ancient languages - Gaelic and Welsh - which are still spoken in other parts of the United Kingdom. Welsh is the language of Wales, and it's very much alive throughout that beautiful country, as you soon realise when you go there and see that the road signs are all bilingual.

Anyway, I was a asked to quill a 'new baby' card with a difference last week. The proud parents of this particular new arrival (a girl called Mali) live in Wales, and so the greeting had to be in Welsh! Fortunately, my customer - her grandmother - knew the right words and gave me the spelling for the word 'Croeso' which means welcome, and 'i' which means 'to'. Welsh is well known for its very long words, and apparently the Welsh word for 'Congratulations' extends to 16 letters and is quite difficult to spell, so fortunately my friend decided she would write this inside the card herself!

I used the stork image from the Photoshop Elements clip art as my background graphic, adding a pink quilled balloon, some pink/burgundy filigree and a little red heart. Mali is still a bit too young to appreciate the quilling, but I hope her parents will like my card!