Monkey In The Jungle

I have a box absolutely full of patterned paper, but I rarely seem to use it! Today I decided to rectify that, and used this bold patterned paper to create my card.

I started by trimming down the patterned paper to just smaller than my card base. I picked out a card base that would complement the pattern, choosing a colour similar to that of the bird.

Next I took a snippet of kraft card stock and cut down a strip of it to use for my banner. I cut a circle from the strip using a die, and used that as a guide for where to stamp my sentiment.

As I wanted to stamp the sentiment directly onto the patterned paper I knew I would need to make sure it stood out well. I decided to heat emboss it in gold, which did the trick. The sentiment comes from The Cat’s Pajamas’ Go Bananas! stamp set.

Returning to my kraft strip I used MFT Black Licorice Hybrid Ink to stamp the smaller monkey from the same set. I positioned it so it would seem to be interacting with the bird on the patterned paper. Once the image was stamped I coloured it in with colouring pencils. As the image is very small I didn’t do any complicated shading, and left my colouring very simple.

The final touch before adhering all the elements together was to cut a fish tail into the bottom of the kraft strip to create the look of a banner. I then adhered the patterned paper to the card base with my tape runner, and used foam tape for the banner, ensuring that the sentiment was properly visible through the window.

I’m really quite pleased with this card, even if it is rather different from my usual fare. I like how the monkey almost seems to be offering the banana to the bird – it seems cute to me! I do think I could perhaps have done a better job with the monkey. Proper shading could have helped it to stand out a bit more. I also thought after stamping that if I’d positioned it so that the tail went off the edge of the circle it might look like it’s hanging from it rather than floating in middair… Then again, it might just have looked like I’d badly positioned it!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Global Design Project – Sketch/Layout

Simon Says Stamp Monday – Use Your Favourite Tool (I can’t actually decide if my favourite is the Big Shot or my heat gun… but I used both on this, so I suppose that counts?!)

TCP Tuesday – Happy Mail