Have a Lovely Birthday

This card is for the "Freestyle" competition in My Favorite Things' "2018 Creative Olympics." Participants can create any sort of card they want, but the kicker is that it has to be a winter-themed card. I decided to create a birthday card. I used the "Sophisticated Snowflake" stamp set (discontinued), the "Birthday Greetings," and the "Blueprints 15" die set (also discontinued) for my card.

I began by die cutting my panels with the "Blueprints 15" dies. I cut the stitched rectangle and the smallest wonky rectangle from teal cardstock, and the middle panel from white. I knew I wanted to stitch a snowflake on the smallest panel. After I spattered White Gold paint from the Gansai Tambi Starry Colors watercolor set onto the panel, I marked the vertical & horizontal centers on the back with a pencil. I used one of the largest snowflakes from "Sophisticated Snowflake" and stamped it in Versafine Onyx Black ink onto the back of the panel, centered over my pencil marks. I used my paper piercer to poke holes along the image, and then stitched through the holes with #5 perl cotton. I did French knots in the center & along each of the "arms" of the snowflakes, following the design of the stamp.

I used 2 smaller snowflake stamps from the same set for my background. I stamped them with Lawn Fawn Yeti white pigment ink onto my panel, and let that dry. The ink kind of dries back, so it gives a more subtle pattern. After the ink had dried, I spattered it with more White Gold watercolor.

For the greeting, I marked a line 1/2" up from the bottom edge of my middle panel, and used my Stamp-a-Ma-Jig to line up my stamp along that line. I stamped with Memento Bahama Blue ink, which matches the teal cardstock pretty well. Finally, I erased my pencil line.

I adhered the white panel to the stitched rectangle, and used Scor Tape to adhere the small blue panel on top. Finally, I mounted the panel to a white A2 card base, which gave about a 1/16" mat on all sides of my panel.