Make Way For Ducklings with Spellbinders!

Hi there! So when I was pregnant with my first set of twins, my baby shower was planned around one of my favorite books from childhood: Make Way For Ducklings. I loved the mental image of me as momma duck with my little trail of ducklings behind me. (I had no idea how appropriate that image would end up being…. I couldn’t have been more shocked to find out years later that we were going to have twins again lol.) When I saw the new Showered With Love collection from Spellbinders released this month, I couldn’t wait to use it to create some cute little baby cards! I focus so much on flowers that I sometimes I forget how much fun it can be to play with other subjects. Let’s get started with the details!

Both of my cards today feature the darling new Duck with Umbrella dies, and I love that the accessories can create a gender neutral, girl, or boy version of this sweet little duckling! I kept the color schemes somewhat neutral, with bright yellow duckies, Waterfall card bases, and red and black accents.

My first gender neutral card starts out by die cutting the Duck with Umbrella dies, cutting the duckling components from yellow, black, and orange cardstock, and the accessories from bright red cardstock. I used a small blending brush to blend Marigold ink (from Pinkfresh Studio) around the edges of the duckling, and Merlot ink (from Simon Says Stamp) around the edges of the red accessories. I find that this small step makes a huge difference in the finished look of the die cuts. It helps to add shape and dimension to this otherwise-flat image. I adhered all of the components together with liquid glue, popping up the little baby wing with some foam adhesive for extra dimension.

I die cut the card base using the new Raining Hearts dies from the new Showered With Love collection, using the raindrop background die with some Waterfall cardstock, backing it with some glittering aqua cardstock. I love the twinkling raindrops peeking out behind the aqua cardstock!

The Raining Hearts set includes a couple of sentiment die cuts, so I die cut the detail “hello” from some more glittery aqua cardstock, cutting the background layer from some black cardstock. I tried to keep the black accents to the “rule of three” so that the accents felt intentional, so I also die cut the “baby” from some more black cardstock with the Be Bold Uppercase alphabet dies. I cut the letters twice and adhered them together to add a bit of extra height. I also added a glittery aqua “sweet,” cut using the My Sweet Friend die collection. I adhered all of the components to the rainy card front using both liquid and foam adhesive for lots of texture and dimension!

My second card features the same color scheme, this time with a card that would be perfect for a little girl’s birthday! After creating the sweet little duckling from the Duck with Umbrella die set, I die cut one of the little bows included in the set and added it to her “hair,” making this baby into a little girl duckling with one piece of cardstock! Isn’t she so cute?

For the card base, I wanted something that was fairly neutral but still would be appropriate for a small child, so I pulled out the Plaid Company Embossing Folder and ran it through my Platinum 6 with an A2 panel of Waterfall cardstock. Once my card front was full of texture, I gently ran the Hero Arts Arctic ink pad over the raised area to add a little bit of extra interest to the background and to enhance the plaid pattern. To ground the scene and tone down the plaid pattern on the background, I also die cut a dainty oval from the Elliiptical Ovals die collection using some heavyweight vellum.

To make the card extra festive for a kiddo-friendly birthday card, I added some banners and confetti cut from the Party Decor die set using red cardstock and glittery aqua cardstock. I also die cut a greeting from the Smooth Lines Mix & Match Sentiments, cut from some more glittering aqua cardstock. I arranged the sentiment and duckling on the scalloped vellum oval, then flipped it over and added dots of liquid adhesive behind the solid die cuts to help hide the adhesive, then flipped it back over and adhered it to the plaid panel. I added the banners and confetti with some more liquid adhesive, then added a heat embossed birthday greeting strip with some foam tape. Lots of texture and dimension on this card!

Well, that’s all for these projects! I love creating sweet birthday and baby cards, and it will be so nice to have these on hand for our next birthday party or baby shower. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!