CottageCutz: I Love Us

Hello Scrapping Cottage friends! Thanks for taking the time to stop and visit with us today. It's Mary Marsh here bringing you the Saturday day edition of the Blog. Happy New Year wishes to all our Blogger friends!

Today, I am featuring the Seal & Walrus Pals die. It's from our latest Artic Animals release. There are 13 new designs in this release and each one is so versatile for a variety of card making and giving occasions.

I needed to start making some Valentine's Day cards and the idea for this one has been brewing in my head ever since I saw the die. This would also work as an anniversary card. It will go to my hubby for the big love day celebration. So let's get started on some details of how I created my card.

Design Steps:

My card took several detours on the actual layout, but I wasn't getting anywhere with trying to use the designer paper and all the layers I had in mind. I even tried using heart paper for the ice floats but that didn't work either. So I switched gears and decided to sponge my background with distress inks.

I started with Tumbled Glass distress ink and a stencil for the clouds. Then for the horizon line I used Broken China distress and the water is done with Salty Ocean distress. To get some white caps in the water I used a Tombow sand eraser, I was happy with the results.

Image Panel: 5 1/2" x 4 1/4"

Next, I cut the seal and walrus images in various colored cardstock. I am showing the ice floats with the designer paper I was going to use. I thought they didn't look like ice floats with this designer paper, so I went back to white cardstock. I just forgot to take a photo of my change. (LOL)!!!

I decided to stamp the Valentine sentiment on a cloud. I used the cloud die from the Clouds & Sun die. The largest die was the perfect size for my sentiment. I used my MISTI for placement and also just in case I needed to stamp the sentiment 2x. Which I did.

Now that all my card elements are done, I am ready to start card assembly. I attached both the ice floats and the sentiment cloud with dimensional adhesive. I wanted them lifted off the background.

To finish off my card, I attached the image panel to the blue card base. I like using non-traditional colors for Valentine cards and after all the beginning issues I was pleased with how the card turned out.

Blue card Base: 5 3/4" x 4 1/2"