Twin Birthday Cards

Our niece and nephew celebrated their 14th birthday this weekend.  I always try to make their cards with the same basic design and just change out the colors and patterns.  I was excited to be able to use one of my new dies that just arrived in the mail from my friend Enfys (Going Buggy). 

When we were together at the CreativeWorld show in Frankfurt,  Mandy, Enfys and I were all quite taken by Nellie Snellen and her wonderful demonstrations of the products she has designed.  She was so charming and had lots of creative samples to show her products in use.  We stopped by to visit the booth several times over the course of the show.

I told Nellie how impressed I was with her dies and punches and she was happy to pose for photos.  (I think I need to start a scrapbook page or two with my celebrity encounters at trade shows!).  

Nellie has a couple of great thin dies that will cut incire patterns (the cut, fold and tuck designs that I have been experimenting with lately).  I thought this star design would be nice for the birthday cards.

The die set is cleverly made so you can cut the pattern into the card topper or use the extra outer ring to cut a medallion to add to a card, page or other project.  No space is wasted since you have additional center die designs to use if you want to fill the middle of the cut.

The directions recommend running the die through your manual die cutting machine (Cuttlebug, Big Shot, etc.) once and then turning the design 90 degrees and running it through again.  This extra step is important for very detailed dies because the rollers in the machine may not provide totally even pressure and, with such detailed cuts, an area might not be cut through with just one pass.

This is the back side of the cut design - it may be easier to see the star pattern in this photo.

The cuts are folded up and then tucked behind the point of the next image all of the way around the circle.  In this case the stars are spaced so that the amount that tucks under is very small.

 When all of the cuts are folded and tucked there is a ring of stars.  The look will vary depending on the color of the card or mat layer that you place behind the design.

I used my very old but still useful Sizzix "Fun Serif" dies to cut the numbers from thick glittered cardstock.

The "14" on the blue card is a silvery blue glitter but the camera didn't really catch the sparkle.

All of the cardstock except the blue plaid  is from DCWV.

The cards were a hit and we had a lot of fun celebrating at the party.

Mandy has this die set and lots of other items available at Scrappy-go-Lucky now.  This LINK will take you to the star incire pattern on the Scrappy-go-Lucky site.  Scrappy-go-Lucky is in Australia so you will need to check with them to see if they ship to your location.

Don't forget to take twelve photos (or more) today if you are doing the 12 on the 12th in 2012 project.  We are expecting great weather here - I hope you have a great day too!

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