Happy mail: Snails

Create A Smile have just launched their monthly challenge and, being a lover of their stamps (and stencils and embellishments and kits and…), I just had to join in. The theme this month is “favourite” so for this card I went with my favourite colouring medium: Copic markers (though I do love the cute snails and the sweetheart envelopes as well).

How:

The snails were stamped on Neenah cardstock — with a bit of masking to get the little snail sitting on top of the big one — and coloured with Copic markers. I’m quite pleased with how the shading on the shells turned out; ideally I’d have a bit more contrast in there but it’s nice to have softer coloured images for a change.

For the background panel, I stamped the envelopes in waterproof ink on watercolour paper and added a bit of colour with my Zig Clean Colour Real Brush markers (another favourite). I filled in the gaps between them with some of the hearts in the “lovely critters” set.

The sentiment was stamped on some red card and trimmed into a signpost shape.

Assembling the card was straightforward. The background panel was mounted flush on the card base with a thin glitter strip to the left of it. A slightly narrower piece of vellum was fixed with a strip of vellum tape runner to the left of the background panel. Vellum (along with acetate) is fast becoming another favourite tool in my cardmaking arsenal, especially since making all those cards for the Clear and Sheer class. The snails and sentiment were added to the top with a bit of foam tape and a few drops of multi medium matte were hidden behind them to stop the vellum flapping around. The final touches were a few heart stickers and a touch of glossy accents on the hearts on the snails.

Challenges:

Create A Smile – June challenge – “Favorite”

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Create A Smile – lovely critters
  Create A smile – happy mail
• inks:
  Hero Arts – shadow ink – red royal
  Versafine – toffee
  Versafine – onyx black
• colour:
  Zig Clean Color Real Brush – 200 sugar almond pink, 021 light carmine, 091 light gray
• Copic markers:
  snail heads – E00, E21, BV00
  large shell – BG15, BG49, BG07
  small shell – B12, B04, B16
  hearts – R27, R46
  envelopes – 0, W00, W1
• embellishments:
  Papermania – glitterations – border – silver
  Tobar – stick-on gems (hearts)
• paper and card:
  Hunkydory – adorable scorable
  Papermill Direct – luxury artist watercolour
  Anita’s – white vellum
  Neenah – solar white – 216gsm
  scrap of red card