Candy? What Candy? - Snarky Halloween Cats Stampers Anonymous

 

 Everyone knows I love cats (and dogs too, but my husband is allergic, so we have kitties!) and the funny, silly, whimsical nature of the Snarky Cats that were released earlier this year by Tim Holtz and Stampers Anonymous were right up my alley. So when I got a hold of these Halloween Snarky Cats, I had to design with all of them. They are really too cute and so much fun! Like all of the releases for Halloween stamps this year, even the Snarky Halloween Cats are versatile enough to be used all year round. Including this guy because who doesn't eat candy all year round right? Ok, enough about these darling stamps and on to how I made this card.

I wanted this cat with his tail hanging down to be sitting on something, and I thought the pumpkin was the perfect seat for a cat who had obviously gorged himself on all the Halloween candy. To do that effectively I first stamped the cat in Black Soot Archival Ink onto a piece of Distress Mixed Media Heavystock. Then I stamped him again on a piece of Judikins Eclipse Masking Paper. It comes in a big 6" roll like you see above, and is the stickiness of a post it note, but all over the back. I have a link to it below. Trim around the cat on the masking paper and adhere it over the one on the Heavystock.

Here you can see the piece of Heavystock on my stamp platform. I have the original image covered with the masked image and I placed the pumpkin stamp in just the right position before I stamped it.

Once the pumpkin is stamped, you can remove the mask and it will reveal a cat sitting on a pumpkin. It's much easier than it seems! I saved my cat mask by adhering it to the front of the plastic stamp index card over the image of the stamp when I replaced it. That way I can used it again a few times if I want.

 Next I moved on to the background. For this one, I used the same technique I used from my background post. You can see that technique tutorial here. The only difference here is that I used my hand to stamp the Tapesty stamp so it would cover the entire 4.25x5.5 inch card base. You can see a couple of places that don't have an image stamped there and it's because I pressed the stamp down in the top right corner and  then moved it and pressed it down in the bottom left corner using Distress Embossing Ink. Then I heat embossed Rusty Hinge Distress Embossing Glaze over it, colored it with Black Soot Distress Ink, and proceeded with the iron-off technique.

Over some of the areas of the background where I didn't get an image, I really tried to play those up to make them look worn away and add a little spooky to it. Also the addition of machine stitching really helped!

When I stamped my image, I also chose the sentiment "Candy? What candy?" from the stamp set. I was trying to decide what I could do to add candy to the card, so I pulled out a Sizzix die set that Tim Holtz released last year called Sweet Treats. They are layered dies, but I just cut two of each shape, water colored them to go with the card, then glued them back to back with the twine bits in between. To make them shiny I sprayed them with some Distress Resist Spray.

The stamped focal piece was water colored with Distress Inks and a waterbrush. Then I double matted it with a piece of Blackout Cardstock and a piece of Distress Heavystock colored with Crushed Olive. It's a great Halloween green and perfect Black Cat eye green.

 I really love how this card turned out. Nothing too difficult, but just enough work to keep me interested. and the bits of Rusty Hinge Embossing Glaze that got stuck to a few areas of the background add the perfect amount of grunge.

Thank you so very much for supporting me by stopping by and checking out the details on this card. I am sincerely grateful for each of you who post on my social media, read my blog posts, comment, etc. Thank you very much!

Tami

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