August Materials Swap - Summer

I really do enjoy the materials swaps that we do on the message board I frequent.  It's fun to see what two different people do with the same materials.  The theme this time was "SUMMER".   One of the things I think about in the summertime is kids playing, so the materials I gathered started with that - a little girl playing tea party out in the garden.  Here's a picture of the materials I put together for each kit:

The tea party picture is from a Hunkydory square little book called Childhood Dreams.  Then I had to find things to go with it!  In addition to the card blank, I added the following from my stash: some gold metallic poster board, a blue marble paper, and a green striped paper.  It's hard to see in the picture, but in the little baggie is a Hunkydory Die Cut from a Pop-a-Topper set called Fabulous Florals, a piece of wide blue transparent ribbon, a "Just Because" die cut (Stacked Just Because from Creative Expressions), and nine gold sequins.

Card Front (above): You can see the front of my card at the top of this post.  I must admit that I'm finding the Childhood Dreams set a bit challenging, but I finally settled on doing what you see in the picture.  I had to lay everything out carefully before gluing it down so that I could be sure I had what I needed.  

First, I decided I would use a couple of dies (Spellbinders Labels Eight) to cut out the party table with guests, and then the girl.  Obviously this meant that the girl would have a piece cut out of her, but it would be covered up with the tea party piece.  

Next, I worked on making mats for my die cut pieces.  I used a rectangular die to cut out a piece from the large piece of gold poster board that would be big enough for mats for my tea party pieces - making sure that it would be hidden behind the little book page.  Then I used the same dies I used to create the tea party pieces for the gold - this time flipping the poster board to the back side and tracing around the outside the two dies (one inside the other).  I then fussy cutting them to create mats and glued the die cut pieces to their mats. (Hint - if you need to get started cutting something in the middle of the page and don't want to cut through the outside, use a very small round punch near the edge you wish to cut - punching enough times to give you a good starting point.)

Now I was ready to assemble my card: 

1) Aligned the big gold piece (from which I cut the mats), making sure it was the same size as the card front - trimming as necessary.  Applied adhesive to the back of the gold piece, and then wrapped the piece of ribbon around the lower (non-cut) portion, adhering it to the back of the piece.  Add some more adhesive & add to the card front - carefully aligning it to fit.

2) Glued what remained of the tea party picture in place, then layered it with the matted die cut pieces - using foam tape to adhere.

3) Glued the die cut greeting in place on the ribbon & added the sequins in the top left and lower right corners with a bit of gold Liquid Pearls.

Inside:

For the inside, I cut the green patterned paper so the card would form a wide white border.  Then I die cut the center of it using the same die set used on the card front.  I backed this with a piece of the blue marble paper and cut narrow gold strips to fit top and bottom.  Then I glued all in place and added the little pop-a-topper die cut piece.  It will be interesting to see what my swap partner does with these materials.