Varada Sharma

Hey crafty friends! 🌸 Let's chat card design. When you step away from traditional rectangles and work with shaped cards, balancing your layout can get a little tricky! 📐✨

Here are 5 simple design rules I followed to keep this oval card looking balanced and intentional:

1️⃣ Depth without clutter: Before adding flowers, I did tone-on-tone silhouette stamping onto the dark blue panel using Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink. It adds a subtle "shadow" layer that gives the background massive interest without screaming for attention!
2️⃣ Unify contrasting finishes: I mixed a heavily embossed background, smooth cardstock, and shiny gold glitter paper. To keep them from clashing, I repeated the exact same core shape (nested ovals!) across every single layer.
3️⃣ Break the grid line: To break up the repeating nested oval lines, I made my sentiment strip an oval too, but mounted it completely perpendicular to the rest of the layout. It's a fun geometric twist that draws your eye straight to the greeting!
4️⃣ Blend with foliage: When mixing leftover flowers from different die families like I did ( Garden Cosmos and Geranium), anchor them with a hybrid mix of greenery. Blending botanical leaves with soft, wispy grasses blends distinct elements into one cohesive bouquet.
5️⃣ Give eyes a place to rest: Highly textured backgrounds—like this deeply embossed pattern from —look gorgeous, but can overwhelm a card. Layering a crisp, smooth panel right on top keeps the texture behaving like a frame rather than a distraction.

Mixing supplies from different companies is my favorite way to stretch my stash! This card features , , , , and . 🛠️🎨

💬 LET’S PLAY A GAME: Leave a comment below with your best guess for which product came from which company. Let’s see who gets it right! 👇😉