Oriental Dress Birthday Card

 

I loved Arthur Golden's book Memoirs of a Geisha which I read many years ago, so it was a nice throwback when I saw it had been chosen as the theme for the Library Challenge, which is for crafters who love books.

I had a pack of both outline stickers and die cuts I bought years ago that I never really knew what to do with, in the shape of Oriental dresses and fans. They are quite detailed and large so take up most of a typical card and I was never really sure how to make the most of them.

They seemed just right for this particular card challenge so I decided to make a very quick and simple card using one of the colourful cardboard die cuts. I used a pre-printed card blank which creates quite a busy pattern with the die cut, but the colours and flower shapes are complementary at the same time.

I finished the card with a pink 'special day' sticker.

Three of a kind

When I make cards I often make three or four on a similar theme. I find that once I've got the kit out, and chosen a colour scheme or some embellishments I like, I don't want to stop at just one card! Here is an example of three slightly different cards I made in the same colourscheme on the same theme. They use silver outline stickers of a Chinese-style dress; I coloured in some of the sections with purple pen and the middle card features purple brads (which might be more familiar to people as split pins like we had at school - they come in a variety of colours and even patterns).