Hello to my regulars and welcome to those who are stopping by as part of the Collected Craft Collab Hop! Chatting with Karen, Anna, and Marie, we discovered a few things:
- We all love squirrels, but can also be just as easily distracted as the fuzzy little friends. Hence the squirrel in the logo and our affectionate name for our group, The Squirrel Girls.
- That we wanted to create a hop series to help us use the supplies we've been "squirreling" away.
- We wanted to bring more attention to blogs, still a vital part of the crafting community.
As it turns out, there are other bloggers out there just like us, giving us the chance to create a great monthly hop series! Each month, we will focus on a theme and supply type. We can decide whether we wish to use one or both. This month's theme gave the option to use either a stencil, a critter (animal), or both. Being true to myself, I of course used both. And really, this theme could not have been any more timely! I wanted to make a birthday card for a dear friend who loves cats, loves patterns, and certainly loves handmade!
Ah! The finished card in all its glory! Keep reading to see how I made it and more glamour shots of the finished card.
To start, I needed to stencil the background. I taped a 3.75" x 5" piece of gray/blue cardstock, to the back of the Hero Arts Festive Star and Bauble stencil. I think this was a Christmas design, but as you can see, it can work for so many other occasions!
I then flipped the whole thing over and taped it to my work surface. This accomplished a couple of things: it made sure my work didn't shift and it helped keep the thin, wiggly strands of the stencil from shifting too much during the ink blending process.
Using two Hero Arts inks and a Ranger sponge applicator, I blended the inks over the stencil, being gentle so I didn't flip any of the delicate stars or baubles up or cause the swirls of the design to shift. Due to the happy accident of grabbing a sponge that still had some glittery ink on it, I also got a little shine out of the process!
I set that piece aside to dry and proceeded to stamp my other images. The lovely cat, crystal ball,and sentiment are from Hero Arts' I See Crafting stamp and die set. The bottles are from Here Arts Pure Magic stamp set. It was easy enough to stamp the cat with white ink on black paper. The ball was stamped on white with some gray ink blending around the edges and the base colored with a Faber Castell gold pencil. The bottles were also stamped on white and colored with ink blending. I wanted them to look more like transparent glass.
I then topped the ball and the bottles with a crystal laquer I received in a Hero Arts kit so they really looked like glass. As those dried, I die cut the cat, then cut two more to layer underneath so it would have some dimension. I used the crystal ball die to cut out the ball itself (of course) as well as cutting some fun foam to help lift it up. I simply fussy cut the bottles.
Next was getting some sentiments inside in a soft purple. The card base is a horizontal top fold (5.5" x 4.35").The top sentiment is from a random set I bought years ago at Michael's. The bottom was from a Hero Arts Monthly Kit (the Venice theme).
After that, it was easy breezy. I glued down a panel of navy cardstock (5.25" x 4") to the front of the card. Next, the stenciled piece. Finally, I just needed to arrange my individual pieces, all glued together and down with liquid glue. I decided they needed a little bling, so I glued a trail of tiny rhinestones down to sort of look like bubbles coming from a bottle. I balanced those with three more over the cat.
Let's take another look!
Thanks for reading! I definitely encourage you to check out everyone else's work in the hop! There are so many immensely talented people participating. The next stop is Katy at Eastwicks Paper and Ink. Katy is linking to her YouTube this month!
I know we would all love a comment to let us know what you thought! And if you really love something you come across, consider subscribing and checking out our other feeds!