There’s a faint crispness in the air around here lately signaling that summer will be coming to an end soon. I still have time for a couple more summertime cards though and thought I’d share this cute project just in time for Hawaiian Shirt Friday! Hopefully I’ll give you a few ideas about stretching your supplies as well.
I started by cutting out two onesies using the Large Baby Onesie Die and some tropical patterned paper. Since I didn’t have any patterned paper I liked for this project, I actually designed my own and printed it out on some textured white cardstock to look like fabric. You can download the free digital paper here if you’d like to use it for your own projects (I have a large format printer for 12×12 designs, but have included letter-sized paper as well) :
12 x 12 Palm Tree Digital Paper
8.5 x 11 Palm Tree Digital Paper
Next I trimmed the bottom inch or so off of one of the onesie die-cuts to create a shirt (you can stop here if you just want to make a t-shirt for your project). To turn it into a Hawaiian shirt, I took the second die-cut and trimmed off some rounded sleeve cuffs (about ¼” wide), a placket for the front (¼” x 3″ strip), and two triangles to form the collar (approximately ¾” x 1″ x 1½”) as shown.
With a simple die cut design like this, it helps to lightly ink all of the edges and assemble it with foam tape to really make it pop. Here I applied Antique Linen Distress Ink around all of the edges with a sponge dauber and these thin foam strips were the perfect width to adhere all of the tiny elements on top. Place the placket in the center of the shirt first and then adhere the collar pieces over top as shown.
The lei was created using the Flower Builder Dies Set and some purple, white, and peach cardstock from my stash. Since one die cuts a ton of little flowers in one pass, I only had to cut each color once to have enough flowers for the entire lei. First I shaped them using a ball stylus from my Paper Blossoms Tool Kit and then I strung them on some thin white twine by just poking them in the center with a needle and passing the flower onto the twine one by one.
To create the sentiment banner, I used the partial die-cutting technique with the new Multi Banner Dies (great for cutting tons of banners at the same time!). First I partially die cut the fishtail end of the banner, stopping just short of the straight edge of the banner. Then I repeated this process on the other side of the banner, connecting the two cuts, and resulting in a slightly longer banner with two fishtail ends.
Cutting green cardstock with the larger banner die and white cardstock with the smaller banner die gave me a nicely matted banner shape to add my “aloha” sentiment cut with the Tiny Alphabet Dies (the perfect size letters for these banners!).
I adhered the two ends of the lei on the back of the shirt with some washi tape before adding the shirt to the front of a 5½” square white card covered with Kraft Woodgrain Cardstock that was matted with matching green cardstock. A few larger flower dies from the Flower Builder Dies Set were placed in the corners for a bit more color.
I hope you enjoyed this fun summertime card project and maybe I’ve inspired you to look at some of your dies in a new way too! What’s your favorite trick for getting more mileage out of your supplies?
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Supplies Used:
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 Large Baby Onesie Die Shop at: TSD |
 Tiny Alphabet Dies Shop at: TSD |
 Multi Banner Dies Shop at: TSD |
 Flower Builder Dies Set 1 Shop at: TSD |
 Antique Linen Distress Ink Shop at: SB |
 Cutterbee Scissors Shop at: SB |
 Paper Blossoms Tool Kit Shop at: SB |
 White Textured Cardstock Shop at: SB |
 Neenah Classic Crest Solar White Shop at: SB | CCS |
 Kraft Woodgrain Cardstock Shop at: CCS |
 Foam Adhesive Strips Shop at: CCS |
 Plus Blue Tape Runner Shop at: CCS |
 Sponge Daubers Shop at: SB |