Lantern Birthday Card

 Today's card is one I recently created for my mother in law's birthday. I knew I wanted to go with an Asian theme so I pulled out some of the Spellbinders Destination China dies I had purchased a while ago, together with all shades and textures of red and gold papers and cardstock I could find in my stash.

I really love the intricate dies in Spellbinder's Destination China collection, and although I have used the Traditional Fence dies often, this was the first time I used the Lantern set. I wanted to try to include all of the Chinese lanterns in the set on my card, but knew my card would have to be rather large to accommodate all three lanterns. 

After a little experimenting, I realized that a Double Z style card could be sized perfectly to fit all three of the beautiful lanterns. I used Stardream gold cardstock to cut the borders, the Chinese character "Shou" (for longevity) and the Traditional Fence panel. "Happy Birthday" was cut from an Elizabeth Craft Designs die.

Lanterns were die cut from metallic gold cardstock and backed with pearlescent red Stardream jupiter text weight paper. Red glitter cardstock was adhered behind the gold Traditional Fence panel.

The first lantern was attached to the front panel, and the remaining two lanterns were adhered to strips of clear acetate and "hung" on the struts inside the "box" of the Double Z card.

I found room on the back panel to add our sentiment and birthday wishes. I really enjoyed  playing  and experimenting with re-sizing the Double Z style card to meet my specific needs. Sometimes you can come up with some interesting variations just by increasing or decreasing the height or width of  a card template by half an inch or more.