Sweet Stampin' ~ Animals

Hey crafty friends, it's Team Susan's turn to host the Sweet Stampin' challenge this week and I'm joining in with a card I made for a friend when she lost her lovely cat. 

I made this card at a class I did recently through our local craft store Krafter's Cart. The class was teaching techniques using Lavinia Stamps products, so everything used here was provided by the store to use during the class, other than basic craft bag stash, which I carried with me. I've seen the Lavinia Stamps creations and quite liked the silhouette style of stamping they do, adding layers of background blending, then building up a scene with smaller stamps and finally finishing with a larger silhouette style stamp. 

We were using stamping blocks rather than a stamp platform to add our images, and the silhouette one being rather solid, had a few bits that didn't take perfectly. I made the mistake of adding mine, after adding glitter, so had to retouch a few sections which didn't take 100% or had glitter under it. The strokes of the pen are not as visible just looking at the card, these close up shots focus on them and make them more visible. The botanical stamps used to create the background, were a mix of smaller Lavinia Stamps, which I don't know the specific names of, but will link below the store and their range. The background was made by ink blending a range of Versafine Clair inks and the botanical stamping was done with a mix of Versafine Clair inks also. A chunky loose glitter was added to finish. I used the needle nose glue applicator bottles I've linked below for this. I've seen folks rave about these thin applicator bottles for glue and I've not had access to some of the other brands spoken about, here in New Zealand. These Lavinia bottles are really brilliant. I've been using Art Glitter Glue for things like my embellishments and layers and these bottles have not clogged and work really well. They make it easy to add fine little touches of glue for glitter like this, or for little embellishments. I highly recommend adding your favourite glue to a bottle like this for tiny details.

I did alter the finish of my central image, because I knew the minute that I saw this stamp that I wanted to make it for my lovely friend who had recently lost her beloved cat. So I added white accents to look more like the cat she'd just lost. I used a beautiful sentiment set from Whimsy after I got home from the class to add the sentiments to the card. I also diecut the panel with a stitched slimline die to finish the edges nicely before adding it to the card base provided with the class. This card base and the panel had been cut to more UK and NZ paper sizes, so my slimline dies which are made to US sizes, weren't quite the right fit. The finish was achieved with some partial diecutting to make the width and length just right. Happily it was easy to match up the stitched pattern. 

Thanks for popping in to visit today. I hope you'll come and join us for our 'Animals' challenge and be sure to check out what the rest of my talented teamies got up to for this challenge. We have such a wonderful team or creators and they constantly surprise and delight me with their take on our themes. So be sure to stop by to see their creations. Until next time, I wish you a wonderful week and happy creating! Hugs, Wends xoxo

(I use affiliate links where possible, to allow the companies I design for to track the effectiveness of my contributions. I receive a small commission, which costs you no extra, but helps these companies see where their marketing efforts are most effective. I only design for companies whose products I love and buy for myself. My opinions are always my own. Please feel free to use the Whimsy Stamps 10% discount code in my sidebar if you're doing some shopping.)