Hi fellow crafters – hope you are doing well! Today I wanted to show how to stretch limited supplies and create cards for all different occasions.
When Spellbinders sent me the Enchanted Garden die set from their new Winter Tales collection by Zsoka Marko, I was curious to see if I could use a single die set to make progress on replenishing my card stash. I also still have a lot of scrap purple cardstock left from when I made my sister’s album (detailed post here). So, I wanted to try to use up some of these scraps as well.
The Enchanted Garden die set was provided by Spellbinders in exchange for my samples. All other supplies were purchased with my own money. I include affiliate links below to support my work at no cost to you.
The dies in this set have more of an abstract design compared to what I usually use. Generally, when I work with florals, I go for realistic images. With traditional florals though, the cards often end up leaning feminine or mature. The abstract florals here are really versatile and customizable.
Just changing the color scheme can completely change the mood or style of a card. For example, with bright rainbow colors, you have cheerful birthday cards but with deep reds, oranges, and yellows, you might make fall-themed teacher appreciation cards. I ended up making 8 cards with this die set – and easily could’ve made a half dozen more.
Since I was planning to make multiple cards with the same die set, I wanted to have the sentiments and backgrounds matching. I started by pulling out purple, peach, and green cardstock from my scraps folders. Then I cut each die out a few times from each shade. I didn’t really pay attention to how many I was cutting – I focused on just trying to use up all of the small scraps with die-cutting. For sentiments, I pulled out a handful of Small Die of the Month sets, with different fonts. I used Spellbinders’ Celebratory Sentiments (June 2017), Our Favorite Font Sentiments (December 2019), and Layered Mix & Match Sentiments (September 2021). I cut each of these out of purple glitter cardstock. This way I was confident the flowers and the sentiments would match, no matter the combination or design I used.
Once I had all the pieces cut, I glued all the small parts together. The reverse tweezers, pick-up tool, and wet glue were really useful for this. Some of the parts were so small that I struggled to position them without the pick-up stick. The wet glue gives a few seconds to adjust if the color combination doesn’t work. I ended up with around 45 complete flowers, plus a few extra pieces that I stored in the back of the die pocket. Once I had all the parts I started arranging them on the larger cardstock scraps.
Encouragement & Celebration
First, I paired three flowers and a Cheers! sentiment on top of a mustard cardstock (Papertrey Ink Honey Nut) scrap, for a cheerful encouragement A2 card that works for many occasions. I centered the flowers in a mini bouquet.
The second card was also A2, but I chose a neutral grey (Bazzill Sugar Wafer) as the background so the flowers and sentiments stood out. I staggered the flowers above and below the sentiment. The Let’s Celebrate is from the same Celebratory Sentiments set as the first card. But once I placed the flowers and sentiment, the bottom corner looked odd. To balance the card, I added a pre-stamped sentiment from my stash, layering it over the same purple glitter card.
For the third card, I made a slimline card instead. I liked the simpler look of the flowers laid out side by side over a piece of Gina K cardstock in Sandy Beach. The Sending Love sentiment is from the Our Favorite Font Sentiments set. I kept all three flat and easy to mail without any additional embellishments.
Birthday
I always need birthday cards, so I used my favorite of the die cuts on two A2 cards. The mint cardstock (Tonic Studios Smooth Mint) stems matched perfectly with the magenta and purple flowers. To really showcase these die cuts, I laid them in a triangle on a piece of grey card (Bazzill Sugar Wafer). I used a sentiment from the Layered Mix & Match Sentiments set in the purple glitter cardstock. This set has both the thin words and the shadow, but I liked it without the shadow here. I added some purple gem embellishments on top of the flowers for extra sparkle.
For the second card, I used purple patterned paper (also used on the celebration card) for the background. I added a dark grey (Bazzill Gummi Worms) panel when the initial card looked too chaotic. I laid the flowers diagonally around the sentiment (from the Our Favorite Font Sentiments set). The orange-yellow of the card base matched the centers of a couple of the flowers and that balanced the whole card. I like that the orange and grey keep it from being too feminine even with the purple flowers.
Thanks
I don’t send a lot of thank you cards, but I like having a few in my stash for when I do need to send/give them. For this card, I made basically the same card as the mini slimline sending love card.
Instead of one flower type though, I alternated two types across a top folding A2 card. For the background, I used a scrap of light green patterned paper and layered dark grey card stock (same as the happy birthday card). I used the many thanks greeting from the Celebratory Sentiments set. The wider mat set off the flowers nicely and I was really happy with the final design.
Sympathy
Sympathy cards have unfortunately been needed far too often over the past couple of years and I don’t have any left in my stash. I made two using the Enchanted Garden set and the sentiment set. For the first one, I went with an A2-sized card, while for the second one, I made a mini slimline card.
For the first, I layered a piece of dark grey (Papertrey Ink Smokey Shadow) cardstock over purple patterned paper that matched the flowers. The purple glitter sentiment was too flashy for a sympathy card. So, I recut the sentiment from a peachy cardstock scrap that was used in one of the flowers.
For the second, I used 9 flowers and created faux bouquets that I placed in a row on the card front. The sentiment I cut from white cardstock since it stood out nicely from the Kraft (Gina K Sandy Beach).
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