Puuurfect Birthday Cat

Sometimes I make cards that focus on one particular stamp set, or perhaps a couple of stamp sets from one company. This card, however, uses stamps from five different sets, all of which are from different companies. The stamps I used to make the patterns are both from one set. The cat is from another. The party hat is from a third company. And the sentiments are each from different companies too. And yet… they all work together wonderfully!

My starting point was the patterned strip of black paper. I took a snippet of black, trimmed it down to the width I wanted, then stamped all over it with the paw prints from Papermania’s Little Meow stamp set. I then heat embossed in white. I actually pressed too hard on the very first one I did, causing a bit of a blob, but as I had cut the strip quite long I figured I could just position it such that the blob would not be visible on the finished card. Of course I didn’t remember that I needed to do that when I was assembling, and had already trimmed the excess off the strip before I realised it was very visible..! Never mind.

Next I created my background panel using the straight banner stamp from the same set. I stamped repeatedly with MFT Black Licorice Hybrid Ink on the same white card as I used for the card base. Initially I was using my MISTI to try to keep the stamping straight and uniform, but I soon realised that it would be quicker and easier to stamp it freehand. I actually don’t often stamp with my acrylic blocks because I prefer the accuracy of the MISTI, but it really was the better way to do it this time.

I wanted to do ink blending on my focal panel, which is again the same smooth white card stock used for the other elements of the card. I initially intended to use just Milled Lavender ink but was having trouble getting the blend I wanted, and it got a bit blotchy. I turned the panel over and started again on the other side. I bought in some Seedless Preserves to add depth to the darker portion at the bottom of the panel, blended it out towards the white with the Milled Lavender, and even went in with just a touch of Spun Sugar to help blend out the softer colour. I then added some splatters of water for a bit of extra texture to the blended panel.

Using a snippet of the white card stock I stamped out my cat, from Simon Says Stamp’s Christmas Cats, cut him out with the coordinating die, and used my colouring pencils to colour him in. I tried to shade him as though the light is coming from the top right and think I managed pretty well! The brown fur was fairly easy as I had four shades of brown to build up the depth of colour. The texture of the colouring pencils shows, but I like that as it adds to the fur texture of the cat. His tummy was a bit more difficult to shade. I wanted it to be white, but still needed to add some shadows for depth and shape. I only have one shade of grey which is fairly dark, and I carefully used that and just a touch of black to shade the cat’s tummy.

After working out roughly where I wanted the cat to sit on my focal panel I created my sentiment strip. The happy birthday sentiment is from Altenew’s Super Script. I stamped it with the MFT ink onto a snippet of white card and trimmed it to fit how I wanted on my focal panel, giving it a slanted end in the process. I felt the sentiment panel was still a bit bare so I added another sentiment directly onto it. This second sentiment is from The Greeting Farm’s Purfect Cats stamp set.

I wanted to add a party hat to my cat so I looked through my stamp sets to find one that would fit. The one I used is from Lawn Fawn’s Lovable Legends. I don’t have the coordinating dies for the set, so once I had finished colouring it I fussy cut it leaving a small white border so that it would match the cat. I then used my glue pen to add glue along the bottom edge and adhered it to the cat’s head.

I used foam tape on the back of the sentiment strip to attach it to the focal panel, then used Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue to adhere the cat flat to the panel, positioning it so that the sentiment gives a sense of grounding the cat. The banner patterned panel and paw patterned strip are also attached using the Multi Mono, as that allowed me some time to manoeuvre them into position. I popped up the focal panel with some more foam tape and the card was complete.

I’m really happy with how this card turned out, if we ignore the annoyance that is the one blobby paw print that nobody was meant to know about..! The colouring on the cat turned out really well, as did the ink blending despite the initial trouble I had with it. I had considered adding some colour to the banners on the back panel, which I do think could work, but the monochrome background does really help the focal panel to pop.

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Addicted To Stamps and More – Make Your Mark

City Crafter Challenge – CASE Me If You Can (elements I chose to case included – cat, birthday hat, birthday theme, black and white strip, ink blending)

MFT Sketch Challenge – Sketch/Layout

Stamplorations CAS Card Challenge – Anything CAS and Optional: Any Pastel Colour

The Sisterhood of Crafters – Stamp It