52 Cards challenge - catching up with week 12

Since the prompt for week 14 has gone up today, I am a little behind......

The prompt for week 12 was to use a small card blank, so I dug out a pack of 4" x 4" blanks that I had bought at a craft show and never used - they are so badly cut and scored that they aren't square when folded!!!  So I trimmed them down a little to square them off, which resulted in a 3.75" card (approx).

They are essentially the same card - a square of embossed aqua cardstock framed in silver, the birthday card is matted onto silver pearlescent and the Christmas card has a frame of peel-off lines.

I stamped/embossed and punched out the Happy Birthday (Tinchies) and die-cut the doily circle (Dienamics).  The mat was embossed with a retro circles embossing folder.  Then I wrapped the ribbon around the mat before attaching to the card and was going to tie a bow, but the ribbon refused to co-operate!!  So I stuck it as a straight strip and added a separate bow on top.  I had torn the base card slightly when first attaching the assembled topper, so there are a few crystals down the side to hide that LOL.

The Christmas card has a snowflake embossed mat, I die-cut the white snowflake (Marianne die) and punched out the scalloped and plain ovals with two Stampin' Up punches.  The sentiment is an oval peel-off.  I added aqua pearls at each corner ..... if you are thinking that's to hide the not-so-perfect corners .... you're right :-)  Then I added a few tiny crystals to the snowflake.

I do like this combination of aqua and white amd will definitely be doing some more.