Hello fellow paper lovers! Thank you for stopping by my inaugural blog post! Comments and feedback are welcome and appreciated! Today I’d like to share with you a card that I designed for the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge. The suggested theme was to use RIley and Company products, but I don’t have any, yet! I saw that they tend to have snarkiness and whimsy, so I chose to use my Tim Holtz Snarky Cats. This guy jumped out at me. I also wanted to use the new Tim Holtz Noteworthy stamp set from Stampers Anonymous. I wanted to have my cat doing something a little crazy, or with a wacky color combination.

I had recently watched a technique video by Nicole Watt Creates. It’s a background technique that she calls “Pollock Style Splatter“. I love how Nicole is so warm and authentic in her video tutorials, and how she does a lot of them in real time. You should definitely check her out.

My supply of sprays is limited, so I used what I had… Tim Holtz Distress Spray Stains and Oxides in Festive Berries, Dusty Concord, Spun Sugar, and Carved Pumpkin to match the little bit of orange in my cat. There’s something about orange cats that scream snark, in cartoons and in real life! I used Canson XL watercolor paper for the background.

With the background done, I stamped my cat in Ranger Archival Jet Black onto Neenah Classic Crest Solar White, 110 lb. paper. I stamped it twice using my Misti platform, as I knew I was going to be embossing it, and I wanted to make sure it was wet enough to hold the powder. I like to emboss images if I’m going to be coloring them with markers, because I’m not great at coloring, and it seems to help keep me in the lines! I embossed using some detail clear embossing powder from my stash.

My cat was colored with Copic Sketch markers, but I didn’t take note of the numbers…a couple earth tones, and an orange that seemed to match the Carved Pumkin. I stamped a couple brushes from the Tim Holtz Crazy Things set, and colored them with Copics as well. I’m fortunate to have both sets of framelit dies for the Snarky Cats and Crazy Things, so I used those to diecut my images.

Finishing the card, I decided to use Kraft cardstock as the card base, again from Tim Holtz. That helped me to decide to use Kraft for the sentiment strips. Instead of wasting a sheet of heavyweight Kraft, I stamped the sentiments on the back of a piece of colored kraft cardstock from my scrap bin, using the same black Archival ink and clear emobossing powder. I inked the edged of the sentiment strips with a little Black Soot, and then decided to help my background stand out by layering it on some black cardstock from my stash. The cat, brushes, and sentiment strips were popped up on foam mounting squares. I added a couple lines with a black journaling pen to try to show movement, but they just seem to blend in with the background. Thanks for stopping by! Have a snarky day, but not too snarky!