Dreams ....

.... Hello! I do hope everyone is having a good day. We've got really mixed weather here today - storms first thing this morning, and now the sun is out and it's nice and warm. I spent this morning in my craft room doing making cards. I have a really fun one to share with you this morning:

Stamps: Stampendous - Laurel Burch Indigo Cats; Altenew - Thoughts & Reminders
Inks: Distress Oxide - Worn Lipstick, Cracked Pistachio, Broken China, Spiced Marmalade, Wilted Violet, Fossilized Amber; Versafine - Onyx Black
Dies: Stampendous - Laurel Birch Indigo Cats Dies; Spellbinders - Grand Circles #4 (LF-114)
Accessories: White Lustre Card; Kaisercraft DP - Bombay Sunset; Tim Holtz Watercolour Card; Clear Embossing Powder; Stampendous stencil - Indigo Cats

I used the sketch from this week's Freshly Made Sketches challenge - FMS#293 for the layout and I'm also submitting to Addicted to Stamps and More! - ATSM#247 for their Make Your Mark challenge.

I got these wonderful cat stamps from my local craft shop - Stampedler Plus Memories - a couple of weeks ago, but have only just got around to playing with them. I'm a huge fan of Laurel Burch's art and I really like the way she used bold colours and blended them. So I decided to use my distress oxide inks to colour the cats. I stamped them on watercolour card, embossed with clear powder and cut them out with the matching dies. I smooshed some of the inks on my craft mat spritzed them with water and then put the image into the ink. The great thing about the distress oxide inks is that provided you dry them between application, the colours layer and don't make mud!! I used a mixture of violet, green and blue on the large cat, and pink, yellow and orange on the smaller one. Once they'd completely dried, I used an aquabrush to paint in the eyes. I used a very large circle die to cut out the design paper and adhered it flat to the card. I used the stencil that comes with the cat stamps to stencil some colour to the top of the card. I adhered the large cat flat to the card, and used dimensional tape to attach the smaller one in front. I finished the front with a bold, inspirational sentiment in black. On the inside I cut some coordinating design paper for the mat layer and on the white panel stamped on a couple of butterflies which I coloured with the distress oxide inks and an aquabrush. The sentiment is a pre-printed one from the Kaisercraft DP stack, Bombay Sunset.

You're going to see a lot more of these fun and funky cats!! That's all for now.