Penguins With Heart

 

The minute I saw the "Winter Wishes" hostess rewards stamp, I knew I had to get it for my nephew who has loved penguins ever since he was a baby.  Most kids have a Teddy bear; David had a Mr. Popper penguin.  Although I used this stamp for his Christmas card, there was no reason not to use it for his birthday card, too.  I wanted to use this Atlantic Hearts which turned out to be more complicated than I anticipated:

Do you see that design element that runs across the card behind the bottom smaller square?  I started out thinking I was going to use Shimmer Trim but then decided baker's twine better fit the playful mood of the design in my head.  Either way, I was going to have to fussy cut the penguin and pop him and the lower small square up over the twine. Fine.  Except that, although my fussy cutting skills may have improved, those snowflakes and that fringe and pom-pom were still beyond my ability.  That meant using the masking technique to stamp the parts I could not cut out on the background and then layering a cutout of his body popped up over the stamping. 

I started by stamping the image once on cardstock and once on a Post-it Note and cutting out both penguin bodies.  It would have been a lot easier if the all the parts I needed to stamp on the background would have fit on the one square.  Unfortunately, the snowflakes and most of the fringe had to be on the lower small square while the pom-pom and part of the fringe had to be on the larger square, so I arranged the White Daisy squares according to the layout, positioned the Post-it Note penguin and stamped the penguin over the Post-it Note so that when I removed it, only the snowflakes, fringe and the pom-pom showed.  Next I attached the Black backing layers to each square.  If I had attached the background layers first, the surface would have been too uneven for the stamp to transfer well.  I know this because on my first attempt I had already glued the white squares on their respective black squares.  After a disastrous stamping, I had to remove the white squares, cut new ones and try again.  Now the fun really began.  I arranged the squares and the penguin so that everything in the stamped image lined up (which took some wiggling) and then glued the penguin to the smaller square only.  Next I stamped the sentiment on the larger square, glued it to the  background square, then wrapped the twine around, and used foam tap to attach the "penguined" square and the other small square.  Yes, lining it up with the pom-pom and last bit of fringe was a challenge.  Lastly I used foam tape to attach the whole thing to a card base.  With the front finished, I could finally work on the inside:

The sentiment comes from "Card Chatter - Birthday" which is one of my favorite sets and, unfortunately, scheduled to be retired at the end of the month.  The sentiments are in two parts, one for the front and one for the inside.  The beginning of each sentiment ends in the "to be continued" three dots which I do not like.  One of the great things about acrylic stamps is that if I know I will never use part of a stamp, I can just cut off the offending part rather than having to fool with masking it off each time I use the stamp.  I did not intend to use the red Stickles on the border.  I first colored in the loops with a Cranberry marker, but because the loops were so small, they looked almost black, so I covered them with the Stickles.

Thank you for stopping by!  Now please go visit Atlantic Hearts and see what others have created with this sketch.  Until next time, Hansi

Materials used, all Close to My Heart unless otherwise noted:
Paper:  Black and White Daisy cardstock
Stamps:  Wintry Wishes (available as a hostess gift through January 31), Card Chatter - Birthday (to be retired January 31), Frosted Cardmaking Workshop (to be retired January 31), Snow Flurries, Snowflakes
Ink:  Black and Cranberry, Cranberry alcohol marker
Embellishments: Black Mini Medley, Red Stickles, Red and White baker's twine from A.C. Moore (I cannot find my CTMH version)