Little Fish

A handmade birthday card with a light turquoise background featuring a scalloped vellum circle filled with silver foiled fish designs in various patterns and textures. In the center of the fish pattern is a dark turquoise sentiment with silver text reading "EVEN LITTLE FISH MAKE BIG WAVES." Below the circular design, "happy birthday" appears in silver cursive lettering on a dark turquoise shadow layer. Small clear rhinestones or gems are scattered across the card for decoration. The card is photographed on a white marble surface with green foliage and small flowers visible in the upper portion of the image, and part of a BetterPress plate with fish designs is visible in the bottom right corner.
A handmade birthday card with a light turquoise background featuring a scalloped vellum circle filled with silver foiled fish designs in various patterns and textures. In the center of the fish pattern is a dark turquoise sentiment with silver foiled text reading "EVEN LITTLE FISH MAKE BIG WAVES." Below the circular design, "happy birthday" appears in silver holographic lettering on a dark turquoise shadow layer. Small clear rhinestones or gems are scattered across the card for decoration. The card is photographed on a white marble surface with green foliage and small flowers visible in the upper portion of the image. The card is photographed from the bottom left corner.
Closeup of a handmade birthday card with a light turquoise background featuring a raised scalloped vellum circle filled with silver foiled fish designs in various patterns and textures. In the center of the fish pattern is a dark turquoise sentiment with silver text reading "EVEN LITTLE FISH MAKE BIG WAVES." Below the circular design, "happy birthday" appears in silver cursive lettering on a dark turquoise shadow layer popped up from the card surface. Small silver and white rhinestones are scattered across the card for decoration.

↓ Visual product list

This card was a bit of a journey. I was planning on creating a vellum shaker card, but the vellum I bought recently was too opaque. So this is what I ended up with instead.

Focal Point

I started out by foiling the main motif from Fish Parade, the Spellbinders BetterPress Kit of the Month for August 2025. The foil I used was Silver Holographic Speckled. The speckled pattern makes me think of fish scales that glitter in the sun. I foiled it on vellum and used the registration film to trace an outline around the school of fish. Then I fussycut along the outline with my Spellbinders 9″ Shears.

I foiled the negative onto dark turquoise cardstock. Then I glued it to the back of the vellum piece with a slight offset. That gives the fish a dark turquoise shadow.

I cut the negative cardstock following the outline of the vellum to create my circular focal point. Then I added foam tape to the back.

A handmade birthday card with a light turquoise background featuring a scalloped vellum circle filled with silver foiled fish designs in various patterns and textures. In the center of the fish pattern is a dark turquoise sentiment with silver text reading "EVEN LITTLE FISH MAKE BIG WAVES." Below the circular design, "happy birthday" appears in silver cursive lettering on a dark turquoise shadow layer. Small clear rhinestones or gems are scattered across the card for decoration. The card is photographed standing on a white marble surface with BetterPress plates with fish designs and a few sentiments are visible in the bottom right corner.
A handmade birthday card with a light turquoise background featuring a scalloped vellum circle filled with silver foiled fish designs in various patterns and textures. In the center of the fish pattern is a dark turquoise sentiment with silver foiled text reading "EVEN LITTLE FISH MAKE BIG WAVES." Below the circular design, "happy birthday" appears in silver holographic lettering on a dark turquoise shadow layer. Small clear rhinestones or gems are scattered across the card for decoration. The card is photographed on a white marble surface with green foliage and small flowers visible in the upper portion of the image and a press plate with fish in the lower right corner. The card is photographed from the bottom right.
A handmade birthday card with a light turquoise background featuring a scalloped vellum circle filled with silver foiled fish designs in various patterns and textures. In the center of the fish pattern is a dark turquoise sentiment with silver text reading "EVEN LITTLE FISH MAKE BIG WAVES." Below the circular design, "happy birthday" appears in silver cursive lettering on a dark turquoise shadow layer. Small clear rhinestones or gems are scattered across the card for decoration. The card is photographed standing on a white marble surface with BetterPress plates with fish designs and a few sentiments are visible in the bottom left corner.

Sentiments

I used the same silver speckled holographic foil and dark turquoise cardstock for one of the sentiments, “Even little fish make big waves.” It’s such a great sentiment!

Then I die cut it twice with the coordinating die. The dies for the sentiments are part of the BetterPress kit. Love that!

The happy birthday sentiment is from Simon Hurley’s Space Adventure release earlier this year. The sentiment die set is called Space Greetings. I cut the shadow three times from dark turquoise cardstock. The words I cut once from cardstock foiled with silver speckled holographic Glimmer foil and twice from dark turquoise cardstock. Then I stacked everything and added foam tape to the back of the shadow layers.

Assembly

I cut a piece of dark turquoise cardstock to 4 ¼” by 5 ½” and glued it directly to the front of my white card base. Onto this I layered a piece of pale turquoise cardstock cut to 4 ⅛” by 5 ⅜”.

Next I placed the school of fish panel in the top center and the main sentiment toward the bottom of the card.

Finally I went completely overboard with the sparkly stuff. ✨ For this I used both Opal and Silver Mix Color Essentials Gems.

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