Happy Brrrthday

Another card that I had a lot of fun making! Whilst my background masking didn’t turn out very well, the masking for my cat worked beautifully. I do enjoy making one layer cards.

I started by stamping the hat and scarf from my newly acquired Paper Smooches’ Chilly Chums stamp set onto a post-it note and fussy cut them. I then set them aside.

I took a card base folded from some heavy watercolour paper and used some post-it tape to mask off a hill area. I then stamped a variety of snowflakes and heat embossed them in white. The snowflakes came from various stamp sets. I started with larger ones at the top and worked down getting progressively smaller. I also added my smallest little cluster of snowflakes randomly up amongst the larger snowflakes.

Replacing my hill mask I got to painting the sky with some watercolours. I was aiming for a slightly ombre look, with the darkest at the top and getting lighter towards the bottom. Initially I just used one kind of blue watercolour paint and simply diluted it more to lighten towards the bottom, but then I decided to add a second darker blue at the very top to help the gradient effect along.

When I removed my mask I noticed that the blue had seeped under slightly. Thankfully it doesn’t look too terrible. I would quite like to get some masking fluid – that would work better in these situations!

Next I started on stamping my cat. I worked out the positionings and stamped first the hat and the scarf. Then I placed their masks over them before stamping the cat, which comes from Paper Smooches’ Chubby Chums. I then removed the masks.

I used watercolour pencils to colour in the cat and her accessories. I put my colours towards the outer edges and blended them inwards to give the look of shading. Initially I used red for the hat and scarf, but then I remembered this isn’t a Christmas card, and it looked far too Christmassy! Once it was dry I went over with some purple to change the colour. It still looks quite red in the photo, but it’s a bit more purple in real life.

The sentiment also required some masking. I took the “Brrr” part from the “You’re Brrr-fect” in the Chilly Chums set. The rest of the sentiment is from Pink & Main’s Dinomite.

My finishing touch was to add Wink of Stella to the cat’s eyes and then coat with Glossy Accents.

I’m really happy with how this turned out! It’s a very cute card. I’m extremely pleased with the masking on the cat – normally when I do this kind of masking I end up with white gaps around the edges of where the masks were, but I made sure to cut within the lines rather than on the outer edge of the lines, which helped it all stamp better. Minor quibbles with this card are – the seepage of the blue, I forgot to add a shadow under the cat, and the sentiment could do with being a little darker.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Allsorts Challenge – Cats and/or Dogs

CAS Watercolour Challenge – Snowflake

Kimberly Wiener’s inspiration card

Muse: ChristmasVisions – Inspiration Card (I think it’s clear to see where my inspiration came from! The layout, snowflakes, blue sky, single character and black sentiment. I did make this a birthday card rather than a Christmas card, but I checked the rules and that’s allowed so long as it is still winter themed.)

Paper Smooches – Cozy (I think my cute cat looks rather cozy with her hat and scarf!)

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Winter Birthday

The Sisterhood of Crafters – Celebrating January, word inspiration (the words I chose were winter, cold and snowflakes)

Sweet Stampin’ – Something New (the hat and scarf stamps are new, as is the “brrr” part of the sentiment)