For the past few years, I’ve seen these incredibly adorable “critter” cards all over the internet.  I have admired/loved them, but never had any darling animal stamps of my own.  Thanks to Butterflyreflectionsink and her tremendous sale, I was able to purchase some sets (and the matching dies) from W Plus 9 that I’ve had my eye on.  They are the Friends for all Seasons sets, and they are just the cutest.

I started with a 4.25″ x 5.5″ piece of Bristol paper.  Using Hero Arts Soft Sky shadow ink, I stamped several of the animals in all directions on the paper.  I stamped them again slightly offset with Memento Tuxedo Black thinking that I was going to use Copic markers.  Once I saw just how cute the stamping was with the black and white, I decided to leave them as is and just do a light blue watercolor wash using Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and my waterbrush.

I stamped a couple of the animals on Bristol paper and colored them with my Copic markers, and cut them out with the matching dies.  My original thought was to just pop up the cut images with foam tape and place it on the black/white/light blue background.  It was just too busy.  The colored images didn’t really stand out, so I decided to cut a piece of velum using the Avery Elle Wonky Stitches die to place on top of the black/white/light blue piece.  (Before I cut it out, I ran it through my laser printer with a cute “from all of us” greeting.)  It softened the background just enough to let the colored images shine.  Because velum is such a tricky paper to adhere, I just placed some liquid glue behind where the colored die cuts were on the back side of the velum.  To finish, I white heat embossed the “Happy Birthday” greeting from My Favorite Things Birthday Bears stamp set onto black card stock.  As usual, I thought the card needed just a little bit more, so I added some Nuvo drops in a few matching colors.

Thanks for stopping by 🙂