A Tower of Giiraffe Cards

I had to look that up. A group of giraffes is called a tower; I have three giraffe cards, and I thought a tower was cooler than a "bunch".

One of my tweeps has a granddaughter who loves giraffes, and I make her cards now and then to send to her granddaughter. I only have one stamp set with a giraffe in it, and it's a bit challenging to make different cards each time. When I was hanging out at an online stamp store recently, just looking for something to get my shopping cart to the "free shipping" level, I spied a stamp set by Avery Elle that had a giraffe, and into my cart it went.

This past weekend I made myself use it. Here is one of the cards I made:

I think he's pretty handsome. I also hope I put the scarf on correctly. This set either doesn't have dies, or I didn't get them, and I fussy-cut that guy out, mane and all.

I actually stamped and cut out two of them, since I know me pretty well, and I have to start over a lot. It's sometimes easier to just make two of everything, then if I don't mess up, I can make two of what I'm making. It's a win-win.  So, since I didn't mess up on the first one, I took the second giraffe and added a mustache for the current Crazy 4 Challenges challenge to put a mustache on something:

I also colored his scarf differently, because I could. I think he's quite dashing.

Then I wondered what would happen if I put a giraffe in a snow globe. Yes, you read that right. You see, many, many moons ago, one of my faithful 3 (maybe 4) blog readers said she wished she could get inside my head and find out how it works. Trust me: you don't want to go there. This is where ideas like a snow globe giraffe develop, and it's a scary place. Just look:

I thought of the snow globe because (1) I was enabled to need it when I saw my pal Windy using it at a crafty event last month. She helpfully read off the item numbers so I could get it right. And (2) the Jingle Belles want us to put a creature on a Christmas card this fortnight, so ... you get a giraffe in a snow globe.

The coordinating sets of stamp and dies has one stamp and a two-part die. The bigger die cuts the whole globe, and the smaller die cuts the center opening where I have the sky. I had this idea to put in micro beads, and I needed to make the layers thick enough to allow me to also add the giraffe. Thus, I cut about 7 extra globes, then used the stamped one as a guide to line up the window part of it. I hope that makes sense. The short story is I needed to line up the cut openings so they layered properly.

After I stacked them all and put in the sky and the giraffe, I added some beads, and most of them even stayed inside the opening. I next added a die-cut piece of acetate, then topped it all with the stamped globe layer.

I colored the base of the globe with a Copic, then went over it with my clear Wink of Stella brush pen. It's quite shiny:

You can even see the pile of micro beads inside the globe.

I'm also entering the snow globe into the current Avery Elle Holiday challenge:

and the Less Is More non-traditional holiday colors challenge to NOT use red or green. Although, I will probably be disqualified from the LIM challenge since this is not a CAS card. In fact, it was fussy as heck, which is the polar opposite of CAS. I'm okay with that.


I think I'm done with the giraffe now, and I've put him away in my critter section. I'm sure he'll come back out soon, but maybe not this holiday season.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stuff I used: SU micro beads, and the following:

InLinkz.com

SOS #176: Leaf Me Alone!

Happy Tuesday! It's time for a new challenge at Shopping Our Stash. This week's title is Leaf Me Alone!, and we'd like you to use leaves on your project.

Here's my card, then I'll explain:

 

I had this idea to make a pile of leaves and have a dog jumping out of them, and to make it happen, I needed leaf dies or punches. I looked through my leaf dies, but they were all too big, so I went in search of my leaf punches. GONE! They were GONE! Then I remembered I'd packaged them for sale this past August, so I went into the garage in search of the box with my unsold punches, and there they were! SCORE!

I only had two, and I know different trees have different colored leaves in the Fall, but I claimed "creative license" and chose my own colors without regard to the shape of the leaves.

I selected four colors of beautiful card stock from my stash only to find the punches wouldn't punch through them. Plan B was to color a piece of printer paper with Copics, then punch a bunch of leaves from that. It worked.

I then stamped and colored the top part of the puppy image, sponged a sky and some grass onto a white panel, and got to work with my glue. I stuck down the body of the puppy flat to the card, but put some foam tape under his head and ears for some dimension. Then I randomly stuck down the leaves, making the pile up to about his collar.

Once I stuck the white panel to the card base, I added a few more leaves so they slopped over on the left.

I wanted him to say, "Oh, Hai", but not everyone would get that reference, so I went with "Hello there". I even had to open three different packages to make that happen, too. The sentiment, dotted outline, and the banner die were each in a different package. See below in the link-up to see what I mean. I was pretty happy I could initiate each of them. :)

So, got leaves? I think you should play along with this week's SOS challenge!

Thanks for stopping by!

PS: I put the leaf punches back in the Keep pile. I can justify that for once a year. :D

Stuff I used: old leaf punches, and the following:

InLinkz.com

ABNH: A Golden Merry Christmas

I'm over at A Blog Named Hero today with a Christmas card featuring our beloved Hero Arts:

We're posting a new card or project each day in November, and we'll be choosing random commenters from the ABNH posts to win cool stuff! Why not pop over and check it out? :)

Thanks for stopping by!

InLinkz.com