It goes in Circles...Circle Card Tutorial

A Little Something by Maureen Esquillo-Kao Cardstock: Bazzill; Patterned Paper: October Afternoon; Stamps: Stampin Up; Ink: Tsukineko; Liquid Pearls: Ranger; Circle Punches: EK Success, Fiskars

This card tutorial was featured in the May 2012 issue of Scrapbook News and Review Magazine. We were covering some design principals when creating and I came up with this quick tutorial.

Circle Cluster Card

Embellishment placement is easier than you may think. If you keep in mind two concepts, you can create eye-pleasing embellishment arrangements on your projects. First, remember that arrangements generally look better with odd numbers. So, a minimum of three elements put together are more visually appealing than two or four element groupings. The second concept to keep in mind is balance. Balance out your elements/embellishments on your project. The following tutorial will show you how I created a card with these two concepts in mind.

Supplies

Solid cardstock

Circle patterned cardstock

Cardstock in 3 shades that coordinate with patterned cardstock

3 circle stamps in 3 sizes

3 circle punches in 3 sizes, large enough to punch out each stamped circle

Foam dots

Craft or pigment ink in coordinating colors

Liquid Pearls (optional)

Step One: Stamp 3 circle images on 3 different color cardstock. Choose shades that are not too dark for pigment ink to show on. Punch out each stamped image with a punch large enough to fit the image (or slightly larger). The point is to have 3 different sizes of circles. Odd numbered groupings of elements look best together.

Step Two: Stamp a greeting on the left side of the largest circle. Note: If you choose a stamp that does not have an empty space in it like this one, just stamp your image on another piece of cardstock and glue to the left side of your circle.

Step Three: Arrange your circles so that they are centered on your card, but also create a balanced cluster in the center. Glue down the larges circle when you've decided on placement of your circle cluster. I balanced out the large blue circle on the left side with the two smaller circles. The orange circle is placed in the middle but slightly below the yellow circle (positioned to the right). Play with your shapes/elements and re-position them until you find an arrangement that appeals to you.

Step Four: To add dimension to my card, I popped up the two smaller circles with foam dots. The yellow circle was popped up with one layer of foam and the orange circle was popped up with 2 layers of foam so that it would be slightly higher than the yellow circle. Note: I decided to add some liquid pearls to the orange circle. Again, I kept in mind odd numbers and balance when adding the liquid pearls. I decided on a grouping of 5 with varying sizes of dots, slightly positioned towards the middle of my embellishment cluster. Grouping the liquid pearls at the top left side of the orange circle seemed to balance the cluster well.

I use LOTS of die-cuts and punches in my scrappy creations. So much so that I've created a class around it! In Scrapbooking with Punches and Die-Cuts we cover some design tips and tricks. It's got tons of sketches and I show you how I complete 9 scrapbook layouts using many fun techniques to employ basic die-cut shapes like circles, squares and hearts!

So check it out! The Bundle includes them all and soon I'll be releasing them separately into each shape so you can choose to purchase the class in segments ;)