Peacock Mini Slimlines | Patterned Paper Cards

I’ve been having fun revisiting card kits this month and trying to use up bits and pieces from them. I made 16 cards with a bee-themed kit from Simon Says Stamp, a SheetLoad of mini slimline cards with a Love From Lizi kit, I have another 16 Christmas-themed cards that will be shared tomorrow, and I’ve also shared a few different posts using stamps and dies from my card kit stash. I still have a lot left to play with! Today’s card uses some of the leftover patterned papers from the February 2019 kit (which is of course out of stock by now, but I’m linking to it in case you want to see what came in the kit) – you can see what I made with it when I first got it here.

I felt like I wanted to do another bunch of mini slimline cards, but didn’t want to be doing the SheetLoad again for these ones. I had already picked out the two 12×12 patterned papers I wanted to use from the kit. They were the only ones I had whole, so it made sense to use them. I had come across JessCrafts’ Slimline Card Resources and chose her mini slimline cutting template and sketch. It’s designed to use one sheet of 12×12 to make 8 mini slimline cards, but as I already said I’d picked out two so I mixed and matched to make 16 cards. You could just use the one sheet and have all the patterns on the panels be the same, or if the paper you choose is double-sided then you can alternate sides for your panels.

I started by cutting down by patterned paper panels according to the instructions given on Jess’s template. I did have a moment that I had to think about it because most of the dimensions are given as height x width, but one is width x height which threw me off for a second, but I did manage to get everything trimmed down correctly.

Next I dug through my solid coloured papers to try and find something that would work as mats. I found a dark blue sheet of 12″ x 12″ Core’dinations by American Crafts. I can’t tell you what colour it was because the sticker on it was wrong and said it was Raspberry Sorbet, which clearly is not the case… I only had the one sheet of that colour, so I did have to gut some of my larger mats to have enough to make the smaller mats.

For the second lot of mats I decided I wanted a teal colour to pull out the teal colour of the peacock feathers a bit more. I found a colour that was close to what I was after in a Crelando (from Lidl) paper pack, which is approximately 9.5″ x 13.4″. I used one and a bit sheets of that, and didn’t have to gut any of the pieces. I would have preferred it to be a touch darker, but it works well enough.

I took some black card to create my card bases. I did have to use 16 sheets to make the 16 cards, but I had lots of leftovers that I can use for future projects. I trimmed them down to 6″ squares, then scored at 3″ so that my finished mini slimlines would be 3″ by 6″. If I’d had a suitable weight of card stock in 12″ x 12″ that would be more efficient for using as the card bases, and I would recommend doing that if you have the option.

The final element I needed to create was my sentiment panels. These aren’t part of the sketch, but I see sketches as a starting point rather than something to strictly adhere to. I decided to use black for the sentiment banners to be consistent with the card base colour. I used a banner die from my stash (I think it’s retired, but there are plenty of options out there) to cut these, using up some of the off cuts from cutting my cardbases. I then white heat embossed a sentiment from the Atta Girl stamp set, which is the stamp set that came in this card kit.

Finally having all of my elements prepared I adhered them together using double sided tape. I also used some of my offcut snippets of card to add support behind any overhanging areas that seemed like they might need it. I paid some attention to the direction I had my background papers facing, so that I might have any elements of teal peacock feathers more noticeable for example, or to balance dark or distressed areas on the background panel when compared to those on the smaller panels. I also offset my cluster of smaller panels in comparison to Jess’s sketch, as I felt that balanced the design a bit better, at least with the papers I had used.

I considered adding some of the sequins from the kit for extra embellishment, but decided against it in the end, as I felt they worked well enough as they were.

There’s something very relaxing about just sitting and working through a process like this to mass produce cards. Once you get into it there’s almost like a rhythm you fall into. It was a great way for me to use up some of my stash and feel productive whilst still being ill! I hope you like the cards I made, and I definitely recommend taking a look at JessCrafts’ blog if you’re interested in the cutting template. She has others for other sizes, like slimline and A2, as well.

Love,

Charlotte E (Lady Joyful)