Creating a Frame from a Window Die

Happy hump day!  Wednesday is coming early this week - I love it!  Today's card features stamps from Taylored Expressions.  TE is celebrating their ninth birthday with a sketch challenge and I love challenges - so here is my entry!

These little guys reminded me a a family photo so I just had to use the "smile!" phrase.  When designing this card I already had the basic layout because of the sketch:

but I wanted to do something a little different.  While sticking to the basic layout I wanted to add some whimsy since the critters in the image are so adorable and goofy.  I decided to go with an odd shaped frame instead of the circle.  Except I didn't have an odd frame die, I had a window die.

The die made a wacky shaped stitched window.  The stitching actually made it easy to convert to a frame.  I lined up the stitched lines with the bar on my paper cutter and cut about 1/16 inch away from the stitching.

I could have created the frame with my paper cutter, but it would not have had the stitch lines (a look I like) and it would have been more difficult to cut out!

It was fun picking out the paper. In the end I used the same tone-on-tone colors and just altered the patterns for my two layers.  Since the animals are neutral any color would have worked but I really loved this yellow.  I felt is just went with "smile!" and it didn't detract from the focal point of the critters.  I used Cottage Cutz "Wacky Stitched Rectangle die" for the bottom layer so the informal geometric was picked up.  If you look closely the large layer has some uneven stitching on it.

The dots were in the sketch and I used quite a few here.  I had yellow, white and grey enamel dots that all worked well but the grey definitely stood out the most.  I like asymmetry and I thought these gave the card a nice weight on the right side without being unbalanced.

Stamps - Taylored Expressions "If Dog Could Talk" and "If Cats Could Talk"
Copics - Dog E30,E31, E33, E35, E37, E39, R21; Cat N0, N1, N3, N5, N8, R21; Mouse W0, W1, W3, R21
Paper - My Favorite Things Daffodil, Painted Prints Citrus, Neenah Solar White
Dies - Cottage Cutz Nested Wacky Stitched Rectangle, MFT Wacky Window
Enamel Dots - W Plus 9

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