No Nestabilities - No Problem

Hi ya everyone this is Melissa from MelissaMade sharing with you today here at She's A Sassy Lady.  I love coming to Sheila's blog each day and learning new techniques.  I feel so honored to be part of her design team and want to give her a special thank you!  Thank you Sheila!  Now, on to my card for today.  I hear a number of people complain about the cost of Spellbinders Nestabilities.  I love them and am willing to pay the cost.  They make things so easy.  However, if you've invested in a Cricut you don't want to spend the extra money for more things that might not be necessary.  So today I've created a tutorial using your Gypsy and Expression - you could use Design Studio or SCAL too.
First I colored this sweet little bunny from Meljen's Designs in my Copics.  I cut her out using my paper trimmer to the size I wanted.  I'm not limited by a nestable size now. 

Next, I grabbed my Gypsy and using George and Basic Shapes created an exact match of the bunny rectangle using my Actual Size button.

I use this as a template only and will not cut this square on my Expressions.  Next, I find a shape I like to be a background edge to the bunny.  I like the scalloped square shape and chose this from Mini Monograms along with the shapes shadow.

I then lined each image together to make sure the desired measurements were accurate.

Then I separated the images and deleted the rectangle template.  I then laid each scalloped square out on my G like this.

I then chose papers that I liked to match my image.  These are left over scraps from a set of Stampin' Up paper (patterned) and solids from my Blues and Earth tone Cricut Stack.

I cut out my scalloped rectangles on my Expressions next and laid out my card.

I like this card already but thought some sweet embellishments would make it nicer.  I don't have a lot of flowers and pretty stickers laying around to match so I decided to use my cheap little punches to make some cute flowers and embellishments.

I simply punch out a few shapes in matching papers and layer them with a tiny bit of glue.  To the flowers I add small pearls to the center.

After finishing a number of these small embellishments I decide to use a bit of stitching on my card.

 I have brown thread already in my machine.  What I want to show you is how to make a nice corner with your sewing machine in case you don't already know how.  First, I adhere my pieces that I want to stitch with a single small swipe of ATG adhesive right in the middle.

 I don't want my needle to pass through adhesive.  Next I place my card in my machine and sew a stitch starting at one corner and feeding down to the next corner.  At this point I LEAVE my needle in the paper and gently twist the paper to the next side to stitch - never taking the needle out.  Your last stitch on one side is your next stitch on the next side.

Here is the final corner after stitching all the way around using this method.

I did the same to the small bunny image too.

After my stitching was complete I added all the layers and embellishments.  Now you have a look like you used the nestables from Spellbinders but you used what you might already have!

 Thanks for checking out my tutorial today!  If you have any questions please ask away in the comments section!  I also love to here your positive thoughts too!  Thanks for stopping by and you can find more fun projects at MelissaMade!