Birthday card for a Sweetie!

Freshly Made Sketches Challenge #244

So I decided to enter another Challenge.  This challenge group stresses clean not over fussy design.  Here’s the sketch we were given this week below.

I knew I wanted to use my Elizabeth Craft Designs “Wavy Fitted Ovals”  I just love this die set.  It’s unique because you cut all the ovals at one time.  When this set came out I didn’t get it.  I was used to choosing the size of die I needed from a set of nested dies and I thought “Well, so even though you only need one, you have to cut them all?”  I thought that would waste a lot of cardstock or designer paper.  But when I saw their design team using them on projects, I loved the way they looked.  I saw a video by Els (the designer/owner of the company) using them.  She cut them out of white cardstock and then colored them with either markers, PanPastels or any other thing you like to color with.  I suddenly had one of those “WHAT?” moments.  Seems obvious now, but I was used to using my dies with colored cardstock or designer papers.  This concept never occurred to me.  Below is what they look like.

You get a total of five dies in the set including the smallest which is a stitched oval.  I ended up loving this concept so much that I now have them in Squares and Rectangles too!  I used them all but the largest for this card alternating Copic Y8 and just the white cardstock they were all cut from.

Next I used another Elizabeth Craft Design die set called “Strawberries”.  This set was designed by Els daughter Joset.  Below is a picture of that die set!

I also cut all the pieces of this set in white cardstock and colored them with ink and daubers.  As you can see in the photo, there are two dies that you can use to make the strawberries look like they’ve been dipped in chocolate.  My favorite way to eat them but decided not to use those dies for this project.  The little white blossom was created with a die that comes in the “Cupcake” die set from the same company.  The tag with “Sweetie” was first created with “word  sweetie” on my computer and then cutting it out with a little die from a set from Spellbinder’s called “Back to Basics Tags”.  Picture below.

The “Happy Birthday” sentiment is also from Elizabeth Craft Designs cut from white cardstock backed with “Double Sided Adhesive” from the same company.  The base card measures 5″ x 7″ and was created with this cute apple green polka dotted cardstock.  The cardstock is an 8.5 x 11″ cardstock.  So I scored it at 5.5″ on the long side and trimmed it to the finished size.  I used the landscape orientation which worked well with the design.  And that’s it.  Very easy and took about an hour from start to finish!  I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and will come back for more inspiration.

Products used not mentioned above:

Elizabeth Craft Designs “Soft Finish Cardstock” white.

Recollections “Primary Pin Dot” cardstock green.