Ballet mouse birthday card

It's one of my nieces' birthdays in September so I thought I'd use one of my new stamps to make a card for her. She likes Angelina Ballerina, so this pretty ballet dancing mouse was perfect.

It looks more complicated that it actually was to make. I took two pieces of pink patterened paper and one piece of white card, all bigger than the card base, then die cut different sizes of ovals in each piece. I layered them together to figure out where the oval would be on the card base then drew around the card base to make sure I cut them to the right size.

Once they were trimmed I layered them up by putting double sided tape around the cut out parts. Then I wrapped the ribbon around the papers and stuck it between the card and the bottom paper layer, stuck all the edges down and fixed it to the card base.

The mouse was stamped on white card, coloured in with watercolour pencils, then fussy cut and fixed on top of the oval cutouts with lots of sticky fixers, including along the tail. For the sentiment I printed it out to personalise it and folded the ends under, then stuck it down with sticky fixers again.

The finishing touches were the gems, and since the card is for a three-year-old there had to be lots of them. I used large gems in various shades of pink around the edges and a row of tiny baby pink pearls along the waistband of the tutu.

What I used:

• House Mouse "Ballerina Baby" stamp
• Patterned papers free from magazines
• White card and ribbon from my stash
• Large gems from Poundland and small gems from eBay
• WHSmith set of 24 watercolour pencils and Derwent watercolour flesh tones set of 12 pencils
• Oval die set and Big Shot die cutting machine
• StazOn Jet Black ink pad
• Plus scissors, double-sided tape, tacky PVA glue, foam sticky dimensionals, A6 card blank and envelope

For the House Mouse and Friends Monday Challenge #201 HMFMC201 on the theme of anything goes!