Trellis effect birthday card

A blog post that's not related to CD Sunday LOL!

I made this card for my niece’s birthday. It was a nightmare to make and she didn’t receive it until 4 days after her birthday – although Royal Mail added one of those days by not delivering it the day after it was posted!

I’d seen an advert in several craft magazines of a card made with a set of dies and wanted to put my spin on it.

I already had the base dies – Card Builder Die Set and Card Builder Panel Die Set by Paper Discovery (bought from Craft Stash).

I spent a whole day cutting these dies from various weights of card and using different machines. I eventually gave up around 11 at night and tried again the next day! The main problem was that there are 2 dies to each panel – the outer edge and then the fancy cut out design. It didn’t matter which I cut first but the pressure in the machines would make the dies move and ruin the cut.

In the end I used 180 gsm pearl card from Ross Papercrafts which worked perfectly.

I covered a cream card base with Tonic Craft Perfect in Cherry Red then layered the first die cut over it.

The top layer is two separate pieces of card - one is a frame with a fancy edge and that is glued over a second, larger layer that has the trellis effect cut out of the middle and plain card around the outside. These are then put on foam tape to lift them up and where the sentiment and flowers are I put more foam tape underneath so it was supporting them but hidden from view.

The sentiment is from Tonic Studios – Sentiment Strip die.

I finished off with flowers that I’ve had in my stash ages bought from a craft show that used to be in Cardiff football stadium, they’re from Craft Fairy but I don’t know if they still trade.

I added 3 drops of Nuvo Crystal Drops (Autumn Red) in two of the corners.