Hi, everyone! I’ve got another wintery birthday card to share today, featuring this adorable mouse Holly from Purple Onion Designs. Isn’t she the cutest? My favorite part is actually her socks, such a genius idea from Stacey to put socks on her feet. It’s all in the details.

My sister’s birthday’s in a few weeks, and I thought this was the perfect card for her. She used to have the nickname “musa” (the mouse) when we were kids. Our cousin, a few months younger, was also quite a bit bigger, earning her the nickname “rotta” (the rat). Of the two, I think my sister got the better nickname.

This card was a bit of an evolution, and is not what I’d call my typical style After I’d colored the image, I had the idea to use this Framed Greetings Cover-Up die from My Favorite Things, but when it was time to actually create the card, I was out of ideas. I die cut the cover frame from Blueberry card stock from My Favorite Things, and was still stuck. Finding the Winter Days Confetti mix from Pretty Pink Posh in my stash led me to the shaker card idea, which, in turn, led me to the Summer Splash card base to match the confetti. An idea was born.

I die cut the frame five more times, cutting away the interior pieces and stacking the frames to form the walls of my shaker. The frame is quite thin, so I didn’t trust myself enough with a ruler and a craft knife to create five identical frames. Die cutting seemed safer and quicker. I’ve kept all the pieces and am planning on using them in the future for a card or two.

Once everything was cut, I was stuck again. I was originally going to make this a portrait oriented card, they’re definitely my “go to”, but I struggled with finding a sentiment. I realized that if I rotated my card to be a landscape card, the “Happy birthday” letters from the Slimline Scallop Frame die set from Simon Says Stamp would fit the width of the card perfectly. I die cut two layers from white card stock, and one layer from X-Press It that I’d colored with the same colors I used for the ears of the mouse. The pink pops against the teal and blue in the background.

There’s quite a bit of dimension in this. Card base, five layers of walls for the shaker, a piece of acetate, die cut cover frame on top, then three layers of letters. Dimension is life!

Limited color palette with such a small image.