Tips for Working with Complex Die Cuts

I fell in love with this die when I first saw it!  It's Spring Blooms from the Cottage Cutz 2020 Spring release.  This is one of those dies that looks incredibly stunning (and intimidating.)  Really - who wants to glue all that together?  It looks great, but....

Well, today I am going to share how I made this card and it was much faster and easier than it looks.

I'll share a few tips and tricks that made it go quite quickly and smoothly.

I decided to use a limited color palette - Rich Razzleberry, Pretty Peacock and Old Olive - the color challenge colors this week at Splitcoaststampers.  By limiting my colors, the choices for all the flowers was dramatically reduced.  But I still wanted more than two colors of flowers.

So, I die cut all the pieces from white cardstock and divided them into three cups - one for each color. 

I colored the white pieces using sponge daubers.  This is much faster than trying to die cut the flowers from different colors of cardstock.

And you can see that by doing this I get variety of pinks, blues and blends giving me more than just two colors.  I also used the blue with the green to give me both light and dark green stems.  (I did cut a few leaves from vellum and two centers from gold foil.)

The next step was to assemble all the flowers.  This could be tedious, but I found an easy way to do this.  I used my silicone mat so nothing would stick to the surface.  (Tip - you can use a silicone baking sheet for this as well.  You won't want to use it for baking afterwards but I know big box stores will sell these in packs of three or four.)

And this is key - instead of trying to place the flowers on the stems, I placed the stems on the flowers.  I left the tiny buds randomly on my sheet and used fine tipped Art Glitter Glue to put a tiny dot on the end of each bud.  Then I moved the stem to each one and picked it up.  Because of the mat, the bud sticks to the stem and not the surface.  When I was done I laid them on the mat to dry.  It went very fast.

Next I worked on the card base.  I cut a panel 4.25 x 5.5 inches and cut two circles using the second and third largest of the Stitched Circle dies.   The larger one is cut from green foil cardstock.

Without gluing them together, I put them on top of each other and laid out some of the flowers to give me an idea of where I wanted my sentiment.  Then I transferred the white circle and sentiment to my stamping platform and stamped the sentiment in black.

After centering the stamped sentiment circle on the foil circle I glued them both to the front panel higher than center leaving enough space for a small floral spray in the lower right corner.

I placed all the pieces where I wanted them, took a photo with my phone so I could remember details and carefully removed the top layer.  Then I started gluing them down.  Having a photo for reference has helped me many times in the past when I forgot where a piece went or at what angle.  I also use my phone if I can't decided between two versions of a layout.  I take a photo of each and can switch between the two to see which I like better.

To complete the card, I used small colored rhinestones for the flower centers rather than tiny die cut circles.

I hope you enjoyed today's card and learned a tip or two on how to make the creative process a bit easier!

Dies:  Cottage Cutz Spring Blooms, Cottage Cutz Stitched Circles

Ink: Rich Razzleberry, Old Olive, Pretty Peacock
Cardstock: Whisper White, Old Olive Noble Peacock Foil Sheet, vellum
Accessories: Noble Peacock Rhinestones

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