Animal Cards, Birthday Cards

To the Birthday Chick

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Hi there!

Today’s card uses the colors from Color Throwdown Challenge #488. When I saw these colors, I immediately thought of the Birthday Chicks from My Favorite Things.

I started by using Copic-friendly Hero Arts Intense Black ink to stamp the chicks, giant cupcake, and balloon onto Neenah Solar White #80 Classic Crest cardstock.  Then I got down to coloring.  I used Y15 and Y19 for the chics, B01 and B04 for the cupcakes, party hats, and candles, and YG23 and YG25 for the candles and balloon.  I used a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen to add details to the hats, cupcake frosting, candles, and balloon.  Then I cut out the images using a Brother ScanNCut2 and set them aside.

For the grass I blended Twisted Citron and Mowed Lawn Distress Inks onto an A2-sized piece of Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock.  Then I trimmed that piece using Lawn Fawn’s Grassy Border die.  I stamped the sentiment using the same black ink as earlier.

For the background, which is a piece of Neenah Solar White, I very lightly blended Tumbled Glass Distress Ink along the edges of the Cloud stencil from My Favorite Things.  I used the same color to lightly go around the edges of the clouds which I cut out from scrap cardstock using Lawn Fawns Simple Puffy Clouds dies.  The sun is cut from yellow Recollections cardstock using the Sunny Skies die from My Favorite Things.

I assembled the card using liquid adhesive to adhere the grass, largest cloud, chicks, and giant cupcake.  I applied the adhesive to the center of the sun, but left most of the rays unglued so that they stand up a little.  I trimmed bits of the sun rays and clouds that were hanging off the edge of the card front.

The two smaller clouds and the balloon are popped up using foam tape.  I used a Copic C1 marker to ground the chicks and giant cupcake by adding what I hope look like shadows.  And finally, I adhered the entire card front to an A2-sized card base.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Animal Cards, Encouragement Cards, Feel Good Cards, Friendship Cards

We Can Weather Any Storm

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Hello there! I know winter is digging in its heels in many parts of the US so I hope, wherever you are, you get to see a glimpse of sunshine today!

Today I’m playing with the new Rain or Shine stamp set from My Favorite Things. I’m a sucker for encouraging sentiments (and ducks!) and this set has a few great ones. I also pulled out a couple of stencils for the background, as well as some standalone dies for the clouds and sun.

I started by stamping out the girl, ducks, and water elements in Copic-friendly Hero Arts Intense Black ink onto Neenah Solar White 80# Classic Crest cardstock. I then brought out what is essentially my entire collection of Copics to color in all of the images, doing some very simple two-color blending. When I was done, I cut out all of the images using my Brother ScanNCut2.

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For the background, I used another piece of Neenah Solar White. I used Tombow Mono Removable Adhesive to temporarily adhere the panel to a piece of scratch paper and then I used washi tape to hold the My Favorite Things Drifts & Hills stencil in place while I used a foam blending tool to apply a heavy layer of Salty Ocean Distress Oxide ink on the top half of the card to create a blue sky. Then, on top of the inked area, I used more washi tape to hold down the Simon Says Stamp Falling Snow stencil.

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I misted water over the stencil using a mini-mister (Ranger sells these, however mine is from Tombow). My thought here was that the water would touch the paper at the open areas of the stencil and lift the Distress Oxide ink, creating lighter colored dots that would look like rain (I hoped) and not snow. I let the water sit for about 15 seconds, and then used a paper towel to wipe off the stencil and pick up any excess water.

Then I cleaned the Drifts & Hills stencil and re-arranged it over the blue side of the card and proceeded to ink up the remaining white space with Antique Linen Distress Oxide ink to create the ground. The curve of the stencil didn’t line up perfectly but I was able to make some micro adjustments to match the curve of the sky.

For the clouds, I used Lawn Fawn’s Simple Puffy Clouds die set to cut out clouds of varying sizes from some scrap Neenah Solar White. The sun is a piece of yellow Recollections cardstock die cut with My Favorite Things’ Sunny Skies die.

Next I laid out all of the elements onto the background and got a sense of where I wanted to stamp the sentiment, which I stamped in Versafine Black Onyx ink. I ended up using only one of the three little ducks that I’d made.

Then, I got out the adhesives. I used Tombow Mono Liquid Glue to adhere pieces flush to the background. For the splashes, I used Zots Bling Clear Adhesive Dots because I wanted just a bit of dimension but couldn’t bring myself to try to cut tiny pieces of foam tape. And for the the clouds in front of the sun I used foam tape. I left most of the rays of the sun glue-free so that they stand up a bit from the background. To finish, I adhered the card front to an A2-sized card base.

Thanks for stopping by!

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