Be sure to back up your work!

For those of you who missed my posts the last few days, my 1.5 terabyte data drive crashed with all my papercrafting stuff on it. YIKES!  I've been working hard to get back what I can and recreate the rest.  So, as a reminder to us all - be sure you've backed up your files!!!!

Today's card is a thank you card made for a sketch challenge on the Paper Wishes Message Board.  The original sketch was a square, but I turned it into a rectangle and made a couple other changes. I made good use of my Marvelous Squares die cut set (from Spellbinders).  Once again for ease of description, I've numbered my dies with #1 being the largest and #6 being the smallest.

As you can see, I started the card with a piece of patterned paper cut small enough so the cream colored card forms a border around it.

For the fancy focal mat, I combined dies #2 and #4. I placed them on my cardstock, taped them in place with painter's tape (for easy removal) and then cut and embossed them in my Big Shot.  This cut two separate pieces with a fancy diamond-like shape in the center of the smaller one.  Taking my scissors, I snipped the 4 corners of the diamond shape to remove it and set it aside for later.  The remaining two pieces I just fitted back together as shown.  Next, I cut a piece of the patterned paper using die number 3.  This gave me the outer shape and the piercings around the outer edge of a square.  I then traced around the inside edge of the die and cut along that line to get a frame which I glued on top of the previous piece.

For the focal itself, I cut another piece of the patterned paper using both dies #5 and #6 - once again taped in place with painter's tape.  Then I took the fancy diamond shaped piece of card stock that I had set aside and cut it with die #6, forming a frame (I embossed the cut out piece and saved it for the border).  I then lined up my patterned paper frame on top of this card stock frame and glued it in place. Next I took a small piece of cardstock (large enough to fill the frame, but small enough for the edges to be hidden behind it) and stamped my greeting on it before gluing it in place behind the frame.  I inked the outer edge and attached it to the fancy focal mat with foam tape for a bit of dimension.

I made the border with a 1" wide strip of brown paper combined with a 1/4" strip of the patterned paper.  I cut and embossed a couple more cardstock pieces using the smallest die in the set.  Using the die as a stencil, I colored in the raised areas with the same ink I used for stamping.  After adhering them in place, I added a ribbon bow and my card was done.