Functional Friday: Layered Looks

 Hi all! Time for another Functional Friday installment. In case you missed this post, I'm featuring one die from Top Dog Dies each month, and each Friday I'm sharing a different way to use the die. My hope is that even if you don't own that exact die, the ideas will translate to similar dies you do own.

This technique layers the holey part of the die cut to make different secondary patterns. This is great for when you need to make a teen boy card, like this one, but really want to use your heart border die. You don't necessarily want him looking at all those lovey-dovey hearts! Let's take a look ...

First I cut the Heart Border Die in four different colors.


I layered two colors at a time and cut them into squares. Some of the edges overlap to give it more of a random, rough look. The squares are all just attached in the middle of the card underneath the word balloon. The curled edges add to the teen-boy-look as well. The word balloon and cheeky sentiment are from My Favorite Things.

 

Here's a closer look at the different patterns you can get just by changing where the dies overlap. Starting from the top left and going clockwise, we have:

- full coverage, where the bottom orange layers fills most of the holes;

- eyeball effect, where looking at the two holes together, you see gold where the whites of your eye would be, black irises and blue pupils;

- diagonal stripes, with black and blue diagonal lines; and

- sweater pattern, with tiny black horizontal dots in between two rows of blue and one row of black.

Even if you think my pattern descriptions are goofy, the point is that you can really get a lot of different looks just by playing around with how the layers are positioned. You can create a nice patchwork effect this way, and get more mileage out of your left over die pieces.

Thanks again for stopping by! I've got one more heart border card for next week, using the actual dryer sheets that have gotten so much use around here this month.

-Kelly