Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Reverse Confetti Casometry Challenge using Mouse Mail




Hello, Friends!

....and we're back!  

Speaking of backs, you never know when mine is going to cooperate and when it's going to betray me!  Today is the first day I've felt "good" enough to make a card in a long time.  So, when I felt like it, I jumped on the opportunity.

Well, not jumped, because that would have ruined my back again.
More like very carefully took advantage of the opportunity.

I have followed Anna Kossakovskaya's blog, Live Love Create for a long time.  She is an amazing stamper and I encourage you to check out her blog as soon as you have a chance!  Be prepared to see some gorgeous cards!  While laying in bed going through emails, I saw that Anna is having a 5 week challenge that I thought would be fun to participate in.  You can participate in one week or all five or somewhere in the middle.  On this post, she talks about her Casometry Challenge 3 which I had to participate in, even though I only had one day left.  

Here are the details!  First, you're to use a random stamp set that hasn't been used before or needs some love.  If you participate in all 5 weeks, you will use 5 different sets.  I used Evernote, a computer program, which has all of my stamps in it to pick the first set I used.  My random set was Reverse Confetti's Stamp set, Mouse Mail.  Isn't it cute?!!  I love these sweet little mice and if it weren't for my back, you'd have seen them as soon as they came to live at our house!  For the challenge, the stamps need to be the main focus of the card but you could use other products as well.  It could be a Clean and Simple card, but since that's not everybody's thing, it didn't have to be.  I went for the CAS design.  The extra specific element in the first week's challenge was to use your random stamp set and a geometry shape.  In all my years stamping, I don't think I've ever made a circular card.  If I have it has been a very, very long time ago, as in long before I started my blog.  So, I decided to use circles for my geometric shape and to make my card out of those shapes. 

For my mice, I decided to break out the colored pencils and give them the extra detail of hair!  I still want to learn how to add extra details to my cards using them, so now was a great time to try and practice fur.  I knew that however they turned out, I would have to share to enter Anna's Challenge, because by this point I didn't have enough time or energy to start over!  I colored my mice gray with pink ears with my Copics and then put my Faber Castell Polychromos to work.  I used 4 different pencils to give the mice different colors of hair, since that's how they would be in real life.  I think for my first attempt, they turned out alright.  It's very hard to not end up with rows of hair.  If I did it again, I wouldn't try to cover the mice with one layer of hair and then add random accents over and over.  That's how I ended up with lines of hair, no matter how many random accents I added.  Instead, I would just add random little marks all over the mice in different colors and then go back and fill in over and over until they were complete.  I don't know if this would help, but that's what I'm going to try next time to see if it works better!  Colored pencils made coloring the little boy mouse's shirt so much easier than Copics because the lines were so little.  Since practicing fur was my main purpose, besides entering Anna's challenge, I didn't worry about shading this time.

I purposely gave my boy mouse darker fur than my girl mouse.  I accomplished this just by using more of the darkest pencil when I was adding my little fur marks.  Clearly, he is a tall, dark and handsome mouse, which is why our little girl has written him a letter!  

Since we were using random stamps that hadn't been used before, I decided to use dies that hadn't been used before also.  I love these Lawn Fawn Fancy Scalloped Circle Stackables Dies that I used for my blue background.  I love the extra little cut out piece in the scallops.  It definitely adds to the cute factor, in my opinion.  I also used Lawn Fawn Small Stitched Circle Stackables which fit inside the Fancy Scallops perfectly!  I was going to put another white circle inside of it, but the mice looked best on the red circle.  

I used another die that hadn't been used before from the My Favorite Things set, Stitched Sentiment Strips, for my banner.  Ironically, you can't actually see the stitched part of this die because I cut it off since it was much longer than the sentiment.  Next time, I'll make sure you can see the stitched part!  With a little bit of twine from Doodlebug, my card was complete!  

Although I love the dark blue circle, it wouldn't work very well for writing a message.  So, I adhered a folded white circle onto the back which you can't see from the picture.  I scored a piece of cardstock and then ran it through the big shot with another circle die.  However, I made sure that the scored part of the paper actually started below where the die would cut, so the entire circle wouldn't be cut out.  This made a little folded "almost circle" which I attached to the back of my card so I would have a white space to write on.  If that doesn't make sense, leave me a comment and I'll take pictures to explain.  I didn't think to do that at the time and by the time my card was finished, so was my back!  :)

Now, I'm going to enter my card in Anna's Challenge.  Hopefully,  I'll be back in a few days with another card to share with you.  Maybe I'll finally get to watercolor something for you!

Happy Stamping!


I used the following products to make this card:

Mouse Mail Stamp Set by Reverse Confetti
Tuxedo Black Memento Ink Pad by Tsukineko
Blueberry Premium Dye Ink Pad by My Favorite Things
Copic Markers
Polychromos Colored Pencils by Faber Castell
Solar White Cardstock by Neenah
Real Red Cardstock by Stampin' Up
Blueberry Prestige Cardstock by My Favorite Things
Mouse Mail Confetti Cuts Dies by Reverse Confetti
Fancy Scalloped Circle Stackables and Small Stitched Circle 
Stackables Dies by Lawn Fawn
Stitched Sentiment Strips Die-namics by My Favorite Things
Primary Assortment of Doodletwine by Doodlebug
MISTI by My Sweet Petunia
Scotch Double Sided Foam Mounting Tape by 3M




6 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello Angela, so sorry for your health issues! I wish to feel better very soon!
And thank you very much you found the opportunity to join my challenge and for your kind words. I really like your card, shaped cards are alwar

levkoi said...

it turned out a very funny card

Kim Heggins said...

Oh....this is just too cute Angela! Your pair of mice are adorable.

Unknown said...

You did a great job coloring the mice and I love that circle die too. Such a colorful card!! Glad to see your post.

Darnell said...

Good to see you feeling well enough to get crafty, Angela! Your circle card is just darling!! Enjoy the weekend! Hugs, Darnell

Anonymous said...

Love your circle card with the mice. So different and so fun. Hope you are feeling better.

Chris R. from Iowa

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