Birthday card for Mia - 2021

Mia, the eldest 'not so little', grand daughter over in Germany just celebrated her 14th Birthday. It only seems like yesterday when she was a little tot!

Mia is still very much into dancing and I used a 'pre-loved' stamp set, bought from a de-cluttering FB group, for her card - I just love the pure joy of the dancing figure:

 I used:

- 5.5" x 4.25" white card blank

- snippet of white card onto which I stamped the dancing figure from SU's fabulous 'Beautiful You' set of stamps - using the Misti and Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad

- dotty patterned paper from Dovecraft's 'Back to Basics 11' paper pack in lilac and soft green, the green was snippets and also cut into a whole sheet of lilac

- next stamped the dancing figure onto a snippet of the dotty green using the Misti and Memento 'Tuxedo Black', fussy cut it and edged right round the cut edge, sideways on, with a black Whisper pen

- used a glue pen to adhere the fussy cut dress and hat portion of the figure onto the white panel

- then, and only then, did I die cut the image panel using a Creative Dies 'square 'Wonky Stitches' die

- used SU's 'Certainly Celery' for all the plain green 'frames', again - one snippet and then cut into a whole sheet

- first layer onto the card was a slightly smaller piece of 'Certainly Celery' as the main 'frame'

- then backed the image panel with a slightly bigger frame of 'Certainly Celery' and set it aside

- trimmed a piece of the lilac dotty paper to just a bit smaller than the green frame and popped a strip of green dotty paper over the lower area to 'pull' the image and rest of the card together. I glued it in place and then trimmed off the excess from the back

- then I took the second try at a stamped sentiment, from the same set - which in truth had stamped way to heavily at first attempt, just below the dancing figure, sob - thankfully before I actually decided on the die cutting size and shape

- die cut the sentiment, using a very useful 'flag' shaped die from the MFT 'Mini Mail' set of dies

- then used the waste from the die cut 'flag' to draw around the inside edge onto green card and trim/fussy cut to just a bit bigger than the sentiment - making sure I didn't chop the longer end too short

- glued the image panel in place followed by the layered sentiment 'flag'

- mused for ages and just couldn't find a lilac gem to match so settled for a Lucy's Little Things 'Bubbles' domed embellishment as a change from a white pearl, glued in place using Glossy Accents, as a finishing touch

I do so love this stamp set of SU's and will certainly use it more frequently. It has three 'figures' in total and each one lends itself to paper piecing. Plus lots of lovely sentiments.

I'm linking into Darnell's current NBUS challenge #31 - it was a first outing for me using my 'Beautiful You' stamp set, and possibly only its second ever outing (the previous owner had only used it once).