Die Cut Happy Birthday Cards

I had several birthdays to celebrate this month and wanted to make them with my Silhouette SD. I thought I would make one design and customize to match the recipient's favorite colors. This pink and purple one is for our niece who turned 13.

I have long admired paper cutters who cut by hand with a craft knife, but any time I think about trying it, I run the other way because I just don't have the patience for it. I finally drew a cake without measuring a single thing - no rulers or straight lines or grids or pre-thinking it. The fine lines are a delicate piece to remove from the adhesive mat and I manually thickened some areas to make gluing easier, but this is still not something I'd want to make many times over. My laziness is quite the task master!

I dabbed a glue stick like a bingo card - up and down, not rubbing across, or else the glue goes underneath the paper and would show in front. Again, the fineness is a hindrance.

As you can see, there is not much gluing surface here and a little too far on one side means you'll see it from the front so some fussing with the lines are needed.

In the end, I love how the thick black paper feels on top of the metallic colors below. It's a tactile thing that isn't quite the same if I put the colored piece on top, which would have been much easier.

Does anyone else come across this dilemma? Which do you prefer to do - difficult and tactile with challenging gluing OR larger, easier to glue pieces that go on top of the black?