First Holy Communion card - Mia

Mia, our little Grand daughter over in Germany, has just recently taken her first Holy Communion and I made her this card:

I used:

- 5" x 7" white card blank

- a layer of very slightly smaller silver mirri card, glued to the card front

- a piece of white card stock, embossed using a Couture Creations 'Constellations' folder then trimmed down to a smidgen smaller than the silver layer and glued in place

- the cross itself was actually made first a couple of days before I made up the card - used white card stock, backed with Stick-It sheet and two Tonic dies from the Tonic Studios 'New Life Cross' set to die cut the filigree shape with a solid outline

- then I used just the solid die from the same set to cut a silver mirri cross

- layered the white filigree onto the silver and then ran it through the Cuttlebug to make sure the Stick-It was thoroughly in contact. A surprise side effect was that it also produced a lovely effect effect of almost embossing the filigree into the silver layer

- then cut a further two solid crosses and added them to the back of the double layer front, just to made the whole thing more 'solid' and robust

- the sentiment was stamped using a VersaMark pad, sentiment from 'Stamping All Day' and then heat embossed using Stampendous 'Sterling Silver' EP

- to die cut the sentiment I ended up using a die from the DoCrafts 'Speech Bubbles' set, making a template first to ensure the die sat properly over the sentiment before I die cut it

- also die cut a further two layers as I did for the cross to thicken up the sentiment

- ran a silver Calligraphy pen around the edge of the sentiment label just to add a bit of a finish

- used thin sticky pads to adhere the cross and the sentiment to the card front

I thought I had a 'dud' die as the centre wasn't cutting properly - but when I switched to 200gsm rather than 250gsm card it worked perfectly! That's made me wonder about some other intricate dies I had big problems with in the past, now I think about it - it was always when I was cutting using a particular white 250gsm card! I know that SU card is always trouble free and that's slightly lighter weight/thinner as well - I think a big penny just dropped here, oopsie!! It does only apply to quite intricate dies though, bigger outline dies do cut just fine using 250gsm.

The original intention was to add a few pearls to parts of the card and/or the cross but decided to call a halt rather than 'over egg the pudding'. Mia's name was on the printed insert I added, rather than the card front - again, to retain a more classic feel to the card.

Gosh it's taken me a good while to have the 'savvy' to run die cuts through the Cuttlebug again once they're fixed in place. The difference it makes is vast!