Cards with paper mosaic backgrounds!

My sister was visiting on the weekend and we sorted through a pile of old Christmas cards making three piles - first, some that I could easily refurbish, second some that needed to be donated as art supplies and the last that I would add to my serendipity supplies which also included any card backs which make great substrates for this technique.  Overnight, I got to thinking if there might be another technique I could use these supplies for and came up with mosaics which I have been wanting to explore for a while.  I chose cards that contained glitter, trimmed them into 3/4" x 3/4" pieces and then

glued the squares from two different cards to black cardstock alternating the squares as I glued them down.  I left a bit of a margin between my squares and my sister left very little.  As you can see she managed to get 35 square on her quarter sheet and I ran out of room!  She brought hers home and will be working with hers and I have die cut mine into a heart and flower.  My sister, Sylvia, made little birdie cards with hers.  You can check them out here.  She is running a blog giveaway right now - you could win one of her beautiful calendars!!!

Here are the cards I created using my two die cuts.  For my first card, I layered my flower die cut (TH) with a black flower punchie (SU), then a foil die cut embellished with alcohol inks and finally a small black punchie and held all of them together with a tiny black brad.  I found the background in my stash - a scrap of white cardstock that has been used several times to clean off a flourish stamp in several different colours.  I added faux stitching all the way around with a black permanent marker, added a black ribbon gluing the ends to the back with double sided tape before I glued the whole element to the front of a brown card.  I used 3D foam tape to adhere my focal element and my layered punchie greeting (SU) to the front of my card.  For my second card, I layered my die cut heart (SZ) over a hand painted red background paper and used scallop decorative scissors to trim all the way around.  I found the quarter sheet of white cardstock with embossed hearts on it in my stash and adhered it to my red card front after I added a length of red organza ribbon.  I layered on my heart focal element with 3D foam tape over the ribbon and did the same with my layered punchie greeting. It still needed a bit of something so I added three little punchie hearts in gray, pink and red to the left hand side of my large heart and that worked well.
I have decided to use these two cards for my card exchange this month so they will be off to my swap partners in tomorrow's mail!!
It is always fun to play with a new technique!!  It is interesting that I could make two cards that used such different colour schemes using die cuts from the same piece of handmade paper mosaic background.

Therese