Mouse in a hot air balloon

My mum’s birthday means, as ever, finding some cute little critters (preferably rodents) for her card. Luckily, I recently discovered Isabel Cristina who creates some absolutely adorable digi stamps.

I did the colouring for this during the Daily marker challenge, but I knew that it would end up on a card for my mum; I just had to figure out exactly how. Isabel had made a particularly sweet card with this set, but I like to avoid duplicating other people’s designs too closely if I can.

So, I created some Distress ink clouds on the card front and glued the balloon flat over them. Then I cut an acetate panel and added a die-cut hillside for the other mouse to stand on, waving to his friend in the balloon. I made a matching flap to attach the acetate to the card base.

Once that was all assembled, I liked it, but it needed something more. I didn’t think that adding a sentiment at either the top or the bottom would work; I had originally thought I would put one along the bottom of the card front, hidden by the hillside, but I was going off that idea too. I remembered the little birds from one of the first stamp sets I ever bought — Lawn Fawn’s sunny skies — and then I just had to find a suitable sentiment that it could pull across the card. I twisted the stamp into a bit of a wave shape before stamping it on some vellum, fussy cut around it, attached it behind the bird and glued the whole lot to the front of the acetate.

The acetate panel naturally hung slightly away from the card base, giving a nice sense of depth, but I wasn’t sure how well that effect would survive a trip through the postal system, so I added a small piece of card behind the mouse that can be folded out to prop up the acetate.

The top edge looked a bit bare, but a few stars fixed that problem.

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Lawn Fawn – sunny skies
  Altenew – birthday greetings
• digital stamps:
  Isabel Cristina – hot air balloon with mouse
• dies:
  My Favorite Things – rolling hills
• inks:
  Ranger – archival – jet black (sentiment)
  My Favorite Things – hybrid – black licorice
• colour:
  Distress ink – bundled sage, forest moss, frayed burlap
• Copic markers:
  balloon – BV02, BV04, BV13, B00, BG01, FBG2
  swags – Y17, YR16, YR68
  diamonds – Y17
  bands -Y17, Y08, Y04
  basket – E43, E44, E47, Copic multiliner sepia 0.1
  mouse in the balloon – W2, W4, W6, E95
  standing mouse – W2, W4, W6
  bird – B60, B63, B66, Y17
• embellishments:
  small metallic stars
• paper and card:
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable – cotton white
  Peak Dale – acetate
  Anita’s – pastel vellum

The colouring for this card was done on 30th September 2017 as part of The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge