Stop Monkeyin' Around

Hello Scrapping Cottage friends! Thanks for taking the time to stop and visit with us today. It's Mary Marsh here bringing you the Saturday edition of the Blog. 

We have a brand new release of dies in the online store. It's our Circus release with 16 new designs. They are currently on sale at 25% off individual dies. The Safari release dies are also on sale at 25% off individual dies. This was our Black Friday release. 

The Circus dies are so cute for Birthday, Valentine, Thinking of You or even Father's Day cards. Just let your creativity soar. The DT has been showing some great ideas & techniques for ways to use these dies. So if you missed any check back on the Blog. 

Today for your viewing pleasure, I am featuring the new Juggling Monkey die and I created a Valentine card. My niece's little 3 year old boy loves monkeys and when I saw this die I knew I would make him a card for Valentine's Day. 

So let's get started with some details on how I created this card. 

Design Steps: 

I started my card this week with the layout. I saw this sketch #837 on Splitcoaststampers and decided to use it for my layout. 

Next, I cut my images in the colors on the packaging front. I thought they were good ones for a Valentine card. After I cut the monkey image, I realized that using the squares on the sketch wasn't going to work. So I switched them up to hearts. And instead of 3 hearts the same size, I used a large heart for the juggling monkey and 2 smaller ones for the sentiments. 

The large heart is from the 2019 Be My Valentine Puppies die. The smaller hearts are from the Hearts set. 

I also had designer paper picked out to use but when I laid the card out I had to make it longer to accommodate this image. And my paper was only 6 x 6. My cards are always works in progress anyway so I had to come up with Plan B. 

I decided to keep the layout a bit more on the simple side. I cut my card base in red at 7 1/2" x 3 1/2". Then for elements 3 & 4 of this sketch, I used some borders that  I had in a Christmas paper collection. I think they worked out great for this sketch.  

Next, I stamped my sentiment in red ink on the first smaller heart. I like using punny sentiments when I create whimsical Valentine cards.  For the 2nd smaller heart I used the "be my valentine" phrase and cut it in red cardstock. It's from the same die as the large heart. I referenced it above. 

Now I am ready to start card assembly. 

I attached the 3 hearts using dimensional adhesive to lift them slightly off the card base. It gives a nice visual to the card and  creates added interest. I decided to cut some additional white hearts and scatter them around the card base. The hearts are from the same die I  referenced above. 

Well, that's it for me for this card. I hope I have given you another idea for a way to use these new Circus dies. See you next Saturday!

dies I used to create card: