Slimline Safari Card

Hello again! I’ve got a slimline card today that could be used as either a thank you card or an encouragement card for a friend, or even a birthday card. I’ve used stamps from the Go Wild set from Gerda Steiner Designs, as well as the lion from the Party Animals set. 

 I started by stamping The Leafy Bold Print stamp from Hero Arts onto my card front with Versamark ink.  Once the ink was dry, I ink blended over it with original Distress Inks in Pine Needles, Lucky Clover and Peacock Feathers. I have to admit that I loved this card base so much that I made another card with the same background and added some flowers for a quick thank you card. 

Next, I stamped out my images by masking as needed and allowing room between my images to cut them out with a square die (I used the Selfie Square die from My Favourite Things). I used copic markers to colour them in, and also for the backgrounds.  I die cut 3 Polaroid frames from white cardstock using the Polaroid Shaker Frame die from My Favourite Things.  I wanted my images to look glossy like a photograph, so on the back of these frames, I placed double sided adhesive around the opening, and then adhered some scrap acetate (from a stamp set packaging), trimming it down to fit the opening.  Then I used a little glue to attach my coloured images to the acetate on the back of the Polaroid frames.  Just for fun, I fussy cut around the elephant’s trunk and made that come out over the front of the Polaroid frame (I had to cut a small slit in the acetate to allow it to come out). Finally, I hand wrote the hashtags messages on the front since I didn’t have any stamps for this, so you can get creative with what you write or personalize it for a special person.

I die cut the  sentiment from an older Neat and Tangled stamp and die set called “Awesome”.  The die set comes with a border die so I cut that from white cardstock, and the word from black cardstock.  I stamped the “You are so”  in black Versfine ink and clear embossed the sentiment at the top of the card, and then glued the die cut “Awesome” in place.  I placed the sentiment going down the side of the card as it allowed me to more easily fit my images without obscuring them too much.  This was a fairly quick and easy card to do and the slimline size gives you so much more room to play with.  Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you’re having a great day!

Leaping Frog Masculine Birthday Card

Hello again and welcome!  I’ve got a card today that I actually made a while ago, but have since made a video for it, and wanted to share it with you.  I think of this card as being appropriate for a masculine card, so I’m going with that!  It features the adorable frogs from the “Frogs” stamp set from Gerda Steiner Designs  and I added a few images from the “Lucky Duck” stamp set as well.

If  you would like to see a video of how I made this card, I have it posted on my YouTube channel  and you can CLICK HERE to view it.


After copic colouring my images and cutting them out, I added glossy accents to all the frogs eyes and set them aside to dry. To create a shiny green cardstock for the happy birthday circles on the front, I combined some Nuvo glacier paste in Pineapple Delight and Sea Sprite to make a bright green, and spread that out on cardstock in a circle pattern. When it was dry, I used the Simon Says Stamp “Birthday Circle” die to cut it out. I also used this die to cut some circles from black cardstock. I stacked about 3 circles from white cardstock and added a final layer in the green for my center circle, then glued this in the center of my front panel. I glued down portions of circles around this in a mix of the black and green die cuts. I cut the hands from the front frog, trimmed his chest to fit in the circle, and then glued his hands down onto the center ring. Finally, I added dots with some of the copic markers I had used for the images, and added glossy accents to the dots.

For the inside of the card, I watercoloured a small piece of watercolour paper in a mix of blues and greens to make my pond. I used Distress Oxide Faded Jeans to stencil over the water with a stencil from The Crafters Workshop called Mini Sea Bubbles. I freestyle cut this piece to resemble a pond.

I die cut two grassy borders for the triangle pop up. You could use any straight grassy border in your supplies or even make your own border by cutting grass into 2 pieces of cardstock temporarily adhered together. I used a die from Paper Roses called Cattails and Grass border die. I then used brown copic markers to colour the cattails and Distress Oxide in Mowed Lawn for the grasses. I coloured both grassy borders, but for the one in back, remember that you actually colour the wrong side of the die cut. I creased both of these grassy die cuts at 1/4” from the straight edge, creased the folds and added double sided adhesive to the folds.

Next, I adhered the right leg of the leaping frog to a piece of scrap acetate with double sided tape and adhered him to the front grassy border. Then I attached all my other images with glue, being careful not to get excess glue on the grassy areas.

I glued down my “pond” by positioning it 1/4” from the inside crease of my card. Now I could see where to stamp my inside sentiment and this is best done before adding the triangle pop up. I used a sentiment from MFT’S Yay for You set.

I glued together just the top portions of the grassy borders, to just about a quarter to a third of the way down. You need to leave the bottom of these borders unglued so they can form the triangle pop up. Then I removed the backing paper from the back grassy border, and lined it up along the crease on the inside of my card and pressed it down. Finally, I removed the backing paper on the front grassy border and folded my card base up and over the grassy borders and pressed it down. And that was the card done!

This is such a fun card to receive because the inside is so unexpected, and those frogs definitely make it a masculine card - always a bonus!!  I really hope you’ll give this one a try. Hope you have a great day!