Collected Crafty Collabs Hop | Oh Crab | Critters/Stencils

I’m so excited to be participating in a new monthly hop. The Collected Crafty Collabs hop is all about making use of supplies that we’ve squirreled away and perhaps don’t give as much love as we should. We’ll have two themes to choose from each month, and for June those are critters and stencils. I decided to use both on my project. If you’ve already been hopping and joined me from Karen’s site, then welcome! And if I’m your first stop on the hop don’t worry, I’ll have information on how you can keep hopping later in this post.

As I mentioned the theme for June is critters and/or stencils. The stencil I used is one of the first I bought after starting cardmaking, and I used it a lot back then but haven’t used it all that much since then. The critter is from one of my favourite collections of critter stamps by Paper Smooches. This one is the Chubby Chums Pals, but I also have Chubby Chums and Chilly Chums. The stamp set is not as neglected as the stencil, but I don’t give the crab image as much attention as I could, so I thought it would be perfect to use for this card.

I started by stamping the crab directly onto the card base. I used my MISTI for positioning the stamp and stamped with MFT Black Licorice Hybrid ink, and made sure to leave the stamp in place in the MISTI for later. I also stamped the crab onto some scrap paper which I fussy cut out. I used that to create a mask, by adding Tombow Mono Multi Glue to the back and allowing it to dry to its tacky, repositionable state.

With the mask in place over my stamped crab I began my ink blending. I positioned the stencil over the card base and used a blending brush to blend Altenew’s Mountain Mist ink through the stencil, with the colour most intense around the crab and fading out to white as it got further away.

Next I lifted and rotated the stencil so that the opens were differently positioned. I ink blended through it again, this time using the darker Lagoon ink. I again concentrated the colour around the crab and faded it out to white.

After removing my stencil and mask I worked on colouring the crab. I wanted a kind of orangey pink shade, and achieved this by layering and glazing the different pen colours. You can see how I did it in my video.

I returned my card base to my MISTI and restamped the crab, this time with Versafine Onyx Black ink for a lovely crisp outline. I used the same ink to stamp the sentiment from the same stamp set, and finished off the card by adding some white detail to the crab with a gel pen.

This card was really fun to make, and customising colours in this way is such a great technique for getting more from your alcohol markers. I hope you enjoyed my take on this month’s theme.

Be sure to check out Boryana’s blog to keep hopping!

By the way, if you love critters and cardmaking be sure to check out the Critter Loving Cardmakers and Papercrafters Facebook group, which I admin. It’s filled with cute inspiration and we’d love to see you sharing your projects there, too!

Love,

Lady Joyful

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Challenges:

AAA Cards – One Corner + Optional: Masking

Addicted to CAS – One Layer

Color My Heart Color Dare – Tic Tac Toe (I used the middle row) (edit – where it was chosen as Diamond Winner!)

Creatalicious Challenges – Anything Goes and Optional: No Designer Papers

Paper Smooches – Anything Goes

Polkadoodles Craft Challenge – Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday – Anything Goes

STAMPlorations Stencil Challenge – Use A Stencil

The House That Stamps Built – Anything Goes

The Sisterhood of Crafters – Stenciling