Birthday: Squirrel!

Later in the month I’ll be taking Sandy Allnock’s Copic Jumpstart class; I am comfortable doing what I do with Copics and I like the results I get, but I know there is so much more to learn. As a bonus for signing up early Sandy created this cute “squirrel with a marker” digi stamp to go with an extra lesson demonstrating one way to approach choosing colours for an image.

How:

I coloured two versions of the squirrel: one in the traditional reddish-brown, using the basic markers suggested by Sandy and one in the far less traditional shocking pink.

CR00250 Squirrel with marker

CR00251 Squirrel with marker

As I’d printed the squirrels quite large, I thought it best to keep the cards relatively simple, so I decided to have them standing on some grass in front of a tree. The only problem with this plan was that I don’t have a large tree stamp or die. Luckily I do have a Brother Scan-n-Cut. I created a simple two piece summer tree outline using a vector drawing app on my Mac and cut it out of green and brown cardstock.

Even though I have the Scan-n-Cut, I still fussy cut my coloured images out by hand. I enjoy doing it, so I’ve never bothered trying to do it with the machine.

I die cut some grass to go in front of the tree, found a die cut piece that would work as a bit of fencing for one of the cards and added some shading on all the pieces with Distress ink and a mini blending tool. Then I glued the trunk to the tree top and cut the whole thing in half vertically.

The wavy sentiment banners were created using a stitched hillside die and then bending the birthday wishes stamp to fit the resulting curve.

All that was left to do was to assemble the cards. The background elements were glued down flat, the sentiment was glued at the edge and lifted at the end with a foam square, and the squirrels were popped up on foam tape. A couple of enamel dots on the banner finished it off.

Class:

Sandy Allnock’s Copic Jumpstart class

Supplies:

• stamps:
  WPlus9 – whole lotta happy
• digital stamps:
  Sandy Allnock – squirrel with marker
• dies:
  Lawn Fawn – stitched hillside borders
  Memory Box – stitched lattice background
  Lawn Fawn – grassy border
• inks:
  Distress – ink pad – antique linen, twisted citron, mowed lawn
  Versafine – onyx black
• Copic markers:
  brown squirrel:
  fur – YR16, R05, E07
  eyes – B00, C00
  marker – W2, W5, YG07, YG09
  pink squirrel :
  fur – RV04, RV06, RV09, RV19
  eyes – B00, C00
  marker – W2, W5, YG07, YG09
• embellishments:
  Doodlebug – sprinkles – halloween assortment
• paper and card:
  Neenah – solar white – 216gsm
  Papermill Direct – plain – apple green
  Papermill Direct – harvest buckram
  Hunkydory – adorable scorable
• miscellaneous:
  Brother Scan-n-Cut
  Affinity Designer