Best Birthday Card with Dawn

Hello, friends! It’s Dawn McVey here and I’ve got a birthday card for you today, that features some lovely older stamps and dies, as well as some new dies used in perhaps some unexpected ways!

I started off with a color palette and some flowers I wanted to work with.

PRO TIP: If you find yourself staring at your craft stash, not sure where to start or what to make, here’s how I like to start. I choose a color palette first. You can scroll Pinterest for fun color combinations. I have a whole folder of “color love”, so if you need some fresh inspo, you can even follow me over there (@dawnsing) and see my whole folder of color inspiration. And then, I also choose a certain stamp or die set I want to work with, as a jumping off point.

In this case, I chose the Birth Month Blooms Q2 stamps and dies, as well as the Large Linked Labels embossing folder.

PRO TIP: This one’s regarding color. I’d chosen to work with coral, hot pink and navy blue, so when stamping my flowers, I first did what was the obvious choice when layering those stamps. I stamped the lighter coral and then topped it with a hot pink layer. HOWEVER, this just messed with the tone of both the pink (made it orangey) and the coral (made it look kind of red). Those flowers I stamped were pretty, but all of a sudden, they didn’t look so much like the original color palette I was going for. If you want to keep your colors true to a specific palette, try this instead. Stamp your flower in monochromatic tones all in the same color family as the color you’re working with. As in the case of the coral, I needed three ink colors for the rose. I happen to have three shades of ink that are all in that same coral color family and they created a lovely flower that still looks CORAL. In the case of the small hot pink flowers, I just needed two shades of pink, and I had a lighter pink that layered well with the hot pink and still worked with my color palette. But in either case, if you’re missing a color of ink that you need for one of the layers, just double up one of the inks and use it twice. The first time, stamp it off once on scratch paper first, so then when you stamp it at full strength the second time, you have the look of two different colors that are perfectly complimentary.

I grabbed a piece of card stock and ran it through the die cutting machine with the Large Linked Labels embossing folder, because I knew I wanted to try using it as a background, rather than cutting it for labels. Turns out, I love the almost architectural feel it adds to the background! Almost like a room with lots of molding on the walls!

After creating my background panel, I added some strips of card stock in my chosen color palette, and again knew I wanted to try something different with a die. I used the largest die from the Capsule Filigree Borders set, and just used one side of the die cut. I added that filigree strip to my straight strips, and I love the way it jazzes that whole section up!

Next, I tied on a tag from the Speed Tagging die with some twine, and then piled on my die cut flowers. I discovered that this birthday sentiment from Best Bouquet is a perfect fit for this tag! Love when that happens!

Lastly, I die cut some carrot tops — yes, carrot tops! — from BotaniCuts Carrot, for some filler greenery!

Hope this has challenged you to use those dies in more ways than just how they were originally intended! It makes them so much more useful and makes your cards more interesting, when you add such fun details here and there! And it gives you way more bang for your buck, when purchasing dies!

What’s a unique way you’ve used a stamp set or die or embossing folder, that maybe some of us haven’t thought of? Share in the comments so we can all learn from each other!

Have a great day!