#1054 – Symmetry

Hello and welcome! Time for a new challenge at Seize the Birthday and the topping this time by JoAnn is ‘Make a Shaped Card‘. As always, if the topping is not to your liking, you can go with ‘Anything Goes‘ and make a birthday project of your liking.

Here’s what I made –

I love the look of those symmetrical dies – there are various designs and they look really fabulous! I tried to replicate the theme in this card, but, by using dies that are not actually released with this design.

To start with, I used scrap paper to trace out the oval die and then laid the flower and leaf dies to fill up one quarter of the oval and traced those as well. Once I set the design, I proceeded to use the actual dies to die cut cardstock. I used Spellbinders Elegant Twist Ovals to cut out the oval die. A piece of navy cardstock with the filler die to cut out the holes and two out of white cardstock to make the card.

For the rest of the dies, which are from Spellbinders Be Bold Blooms, I cut out two pieces for each piece required, adhering them to get a bit of dimension. I then adhered them over the card, leaving a gap in between for the sentiment. The sentiment itself is from Paper Trey Ink Good Times stamp set. I trimmed the edges of the sentiment strip to make a banner and then added a pink + gold foil washi tape beneath it for some flare.

And that’s my card. And I’m joining the following challenges as well –

Happy Little Stampers Birthday challenge: Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge: Happy Birthday

Checkout the Seize the Birthday blog to see more inspiration from our design team and our party guests!

Thank you so much for stopping by!

#1009 – Purple, Blue and Green

Hello and welcome! Time for another challenge at the Seize the Birthday blog and this time we have Colleen giving us our optional topping and she chose ‘Purple, Blue and Green‘. Of course, Seize the Birthday always has the ‘Anything Goes‘ option open as well, as long as your project is birthday-related, feel free to join the party!

And here’s what I made –

No, I don’t have a shadow across the card. The panel just has a darker colored streak across it. 😀

I would have chosen to go with some flowers or maybe some underwater scene.. but I was really itching to make something else. Well, I came across this tutorial from Jennifer McGuire just in time!! She uses distress inks, stencils and ink lifting to make some magical backgrounds. I did the same – the effect, I must admit, looks better IRL than in the picture above. 🙂

I used a deeper and bolder shades of distress inks in blue and purple for the base and after ink lifting using the Time Holtz Lace stencil, I used lighter and brighter shades of green and yellow for the top. The color combination worked really well with this design, so thank you for that, Colleen!! 😀

I was however, lost on what to follow up. I really loved how the panel looked, and didn’t want to push it to the background. I initially thought of adding just the sentiment, but somehow wasn’t happy with just that. Then I thought of adding just one element above. White seemed too bright, so I went with a dark gold metallic paper I had instead.

So, once the panel dried, I trimmed it and foam mounted it on black card base with a mini slimline dimension. I then added the sentiment strip, gold heat embossed with a sentiment from Paper Trey Ink Good Times stamp set. The die cut is from the paired die set with the same name, for which I used the metallic paper for the top panel and a few more pieces from black cardstock. I also used a feather die cut from Spellbinders Feathers die set – this die also has embossing included – and adhered it on top.

And that’s my card! Step over to the Seize the Birthday challenge blog to checkout more inspiration from our awesome DT and our Surprise Party Guest Karren J!

And thank you so much for stopping by! 🙂