I decided to get an earlier start this month on the birthday cards for our church ministry, and I created a batch of this card for the kind members of the ministry to send. This month I’m doing something a little different because I’m going to make up batches of two different cards. This is the first one, and I haven’t started yet on the second one (although I have a plan in mind). Usually for these cards I pull out retired Designer Series Paper but I really wanted to create something a little different this month. Last month I used the tree image from the Amazing Silhouettes stamp set and I thought I would pull that one out again. I like how these images are different than what I typically use, and they can really create a different artistic look. I hope the people with February birthdays that receive one of these cards enjoy it!
This current challenge from the Global Design Project was the inspiration for my card. I also was inspired by a variety of cards that I kept seeing in my Facebook newsfeed. I kept seeing these beautiful CAS (Clean & Simple) cards that featured an image framed with a circle with a small diecut alongside the edge. I don’t go on FB alot, but for a few weeks I kept seeing them – they were cropping up every time I logged in and scrolled even a little. And, of course, with the vagaries of FB, I can’t find them now for love nor money. I thought this challenge from GDP was perfect for me to experiment with the look that I was seeing online.
I have a couple of tips for you that I used for this card: 1) for some visual variety in doing tone-on-tone white, a layer of Shimmery White is wonderful; that’s what I used for my embossed frame; 2) the Messages die is great for cutting out individual sentiments, too. So check it out to see if one of the shapes just right for a sentiment that you’ve selected.
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