Technique for card making using banner die

 I needed a birthday card for a man.  Most of the components of the card were readily on hand, but the one central idea was held in the word "THOUGHTS" as in  "Some Birthday Thoughts for You."  I already had a clever sentiment for the inside, but needed some tease to get the recipient to OPEN the card.  I searched high and low through my stash of sentiments and came up with nothing.  This meant that the element on the card was going to have to be created.  Creating is what crafters do best!

First step was to determine HOW to create the word Thought so that it would stand out and at the same time fit the card.  A piece of vellum that had been inked through a stensil was available and looked very good over a lighter color of craft cardstock.  So far, so good!  I have several sets of alphabet stamps and alphabet dies for cutting out the letters.  Not wanting to use an all caps font, I chose the Calligraphy style of Altanew's alphabet stamps because I had both caps and lower case letters.

I tried stamping them in a straight line, but wasn't happy with the final appearance.  Back to the drawing board.  I had some all-occasion stamps with banner dies (Hero Arts Ribbon Messages): 

So I pulled the larger ribbon banner and cut several of them from some co-ordinating color card stock.  These I glued together in a stack to create depth.  But how was I going to get the stamps to fit since they were just letters that had to be shaped onto the curve of the ribbon banner?  My solution was to trace the inside of the ribbon banner onto a scrap piece of card stock then stamp the letters to see how they would fit and if they were going to be too big or too small:

The next step was to take a piece of the cardstock from which I had already cut one of the ribbon banners and place it ON TOP of my stamp positioner with a piece of white (maybe I should have used the lighter colored craft) cardstock lying IN the stamp positioner directly under the template created by the cut-out lying on top of the stamp positioner's lid.  

This way I could see exactly where to place the stamps to create the word and to keep it within the curves of the banner. Each letter had to be placed individually because the script style of the letters allowed them to flow together as if they had been written.  This worked beautifully!  Then I was able to fussy-cut the word and glue it to the layers of banner.  

As luck would have it, Altanew has several sets of sentiments that complimented this Calligraphy font nicely.  This way, no conflicting fonts had to be used on the front of the card:

The one with the sentiments written out is called Painted Greetings.

  

A party hat sticker and some dots completed the front of the card.  Ta-Da! the finished card front with a cleaver sentiment inside that reads: "in Wine there is Wisdom, in Beer there is Freedom, in Water there is Bacteria"  signed Cheers!

It's not Hallmark. . .  It's a hand made card!