Die Cut Crazy Birthday Blog Hop!

 Welcome back! I'm glad you stopped by today, because there is a super fun birthday themed Blog Hop going on amongst my Co-Contributor's at DieCutCrazy.com. This month, Eric from the PaperWizard has donated a lovely piece of blog candy, so be sure to comment on everyone's blog for a chance to win that! If you can follow us on facebook and hit the Like button on my post from yesterday, you can win a little something from ME as well :-D We're all so excited for the launch of our new website too! I hope you enjoy my little birthday card, it's full of die cuts and should somewhat easy to duplicate in your craft space of choice :-)

Ah, birthdays... who doesn't love a good excuse for a party, huh? Well, I've been surprised over the years, how many people actually don't enjoy them, but I wasn't raised that way. Having a daughter born on New Year's Eve meant my mom sacrificed a lot of year end partying in order to make my birthday special each year. Even as I've gotten older and said things like, "Oh mom, do what you want this year, I'm grown enough to be happy with a special meal with my family." She just laughs and says she'll be on call lol. Without fail, she always mentions that it must be time for my half birthday, as well! What a mom :-D

For this card, I used die cuts from the Basic Grey RSVP ephemera pack. Using preselected, coordinated die cuts makes it so easy to create a card with lots of layers and depth; just select a few pieces that seem to fit together, glue them with some multi-dimensional adhesives, and voila! You've created an intriguingly beautiful card for your bestie, man, mom, or whoever's birthday might catch you off guard in the future. I was so excited for this hop, because it seems you can never have too many birthday cards on hand, am I right?

I have been wanting to use that flowered frame for awhile, and this project was the perfect occasion. There was a smaller frame within it that I wanted to have a little more lift too, so I managed to cut my very tiny foam squares even tinier to fit in that thin underspace. It can be kind of annoying when a corner of your foam adhesive peaks out from under your layers, but no worries, I usually just add some more layers on top! 

The bottom right corner where this happy little accident occurred was just the right spot to add some flowers. I chose one of shimmery fabric, and one made from mulberry paper,  the little brad holds it all together and eliminated the need to find yet another type of adhesive to hold it all together. Ever since I started selling my cards, the idea of my card not falling apart after I've made it is a lot more appealing.

Now, after adding the acetate flowers die cut under the frames, and the Party banner on top, my card was looking oh so festive, but I wanted it to be somewhat summery, so I thought about some stamp sentiments I could make work for me. A package of K & Co. die cuts with fancy borders has been very handy to have around, it came with four or five different shapes, and was very inexpensive at Michael's.  Ever made a stamping mask before? Simply stamp your sentiment or image onto a scratch piece of paper. I like to grab a post-it note, and there are lot's of new products out there made for this type of fun too. Another way to use the one word from this stamp would have been to just color in the word "garden" with a marker and stamp it that way onto that K & Co. die cut.

After stamping your image, carefully cut out the part of the stamp you want to show on your project. Line it up in the desired location, stamp over, and looky-here, you have a perfect stamped phrase without any mess.

It's nice to continue the theme of your card on the inside as well, so I stamped some CloseToMyHeart flowers off the page and a simple birthday sentiment to finish this birthday card.  Another advantage to the post it notes? They are thin and come in a variety of colors, so if you aren't the best stamper (like me) and you make a boo-boo,* you can just cut out the post it note version and cover your mistake right up, while adding another bit of visual interest!

*If you don't remember to mask the "nd" in "and" to make an "A," you can also work a little piece of cover up paper into your design and the recipient will never know the difference!

I love the way the plastic die cut adds some shine to my card. It was even shinier after I realized I'd left the protective plastic cover on it! Yeah, I noticed that after I'd glued all my layers down, tried to lift part of it back up, and tore the plastic. So I just took a deep breath, carefully lifted it apart, got the plastic off, and made a mental note not to do that again!

I hope you've enjoyed reading about how I spruced up my die cuts to make this lovely card, full of dimension. Now, hop on over to our new site, www.DieCutCrazy.com and comment on each blog for a chance to win that amazing layout from the Paper Wizard. Follow DieCutCrazy on facebook for even more inspiration, and tune back in to see my latest round of cards going out in the shops next week!

Enjoy...
xoxoAnna