Party pets

The past year or so I've been trying to be more thoughtful in my craft purchases, partly because of my budget and partly because I still have a good number of stamp sets that haven't ever seen ink. The stamp set I used for today's cards, from the June 2021 My Monthly Hero kit from Hero Arts, was one of those sets. But not any more! I made four cards featuring some cute cats and dogs that are definitely ready for a party.

To start these cards, I stamped and die-cut a whole bunch of cats, dogs, presents, and balloons that I colored with Prismacolor pencils and blended with Gamsol. I am not an expert color-er, so I stuck to basically one color for each of the animals, with the exception of some stripes on the yellow kitties. For the accessories, I used the same pallet of five colors so I could mix and match all the pieces when deciding on my layouts.

These first two cards have similar layouts, and I love how the scalloped rectangle adds to the playful feeling. For the card on the left I placed a small piece of foam tape behind each balloon and then used a tiny drop of glue at the end of each string. For the card on the right I used a few smaller stamps from the set to create a tone-on-tone background.

For the next card, I used cloud stencils (Taylored Expressions) and blending brushes to make a sky full of fluffy clouds on a white card base. I attached the dog and balloon bunch with foam tape and glued the individual balloons directly to the card base. For the last card I used two cat images so I could include the sentiment "sending birthday whiskers," which makes me smile. I used a confetti embossing folder (Taylored Expressions) to add texture to the background, although I had to use the embossing folder upside down because I had a top-folding card base. This way it just looks like the confetti is  piling up on the ground!

I did want to share the inside of the balloon card. I had planned to stamp the sentiment directly inside the card, but I smeared the ink. Instead of covering it with another plain panel, I decided to ink blend some clouds above and below the stamped sentiment. I love how it turned out, and I think it makes the inside a little more fun. 

If you have stamp sets you haven't used, I challenge you to pull one out the next time you make a card. Thanks for stopping by!