Copy that

Welcome to September's Scissors Paper Heart Blog Hop. This month the theme is 'Copy That'. Copy what? We have each chosen one of our favourite ideas from the new Annual Inspirations Idea Book and put our own twist on it.

For those who are new here, a Blog Hop is a big circle of blogs, linking to each other, all on the same theme. It allows you to get lots of great ideas going from one to the other. If you follow the circle from here you'll end up back here after checking out all the other ideas.

If you have arrived here from Kerry's Blog, Kerry's Creative Collection, then you're on the right track.

When I was flicking through the new Annual Inspirations Idea Book, this card on page 23 caught my eye. It was made using the new Adventure Fundamentals paper, and looked very cute!

Every year I give my daughter's teachers a card and some chocolate for Teacher's Appreciation Day, which is the last Friday in October. I thought this year I'd get organised early and get my cards done.

I looked at all our new range of Fundamentals paper, and chose the Whimsy Fundamentals pack to make my cards - it contains the sort of colours that my daughter loves, and since she'll be the one writing in the cards, why not :). This was paired with the Whimsy Ribbon Pack, of course, and matching cardstock.

I then pulled out one of my favourite stamps from this Ideas Book - the School Kids stamp set. The kids in it are just so cute, and I love all the other elements in it too - I can see it being used on school pages, on cards, on pages about my kids and their friends....just so many uses for it! The school house also looks a bit like a farmhouse to me too, and I have some farm visit photos in mind to use it with too.

Once I had my papers all sorted it was just a matter of sticking them all down. I used a White Daisy square of 3 1/4" x 3 1/4", a cardstock square of 3 1/2" x 3 1/2", and a patterned paper rectangle of 5 1/4" x 4".

I made 4 cards in total - 3 teacher thank you cards, and another thank you card for a friend, using the Birthday Princess stamp set. You will note that there is no sentiment stamped on my cards yet...that's because I'm waiting for my Short & Sweet stamp set to arrive. I love the Thank You on that set, and will mask it to put the Thank above the ribbon and the You underneath, as in the example.

So here are the four cards:

I coloured in the stamps using ShinHan markers, using this CTMH Marker Chart to match the colours. I also used multiple colours on the hair, faces, and legs of the stamps to add shading. See the close-ups below for the detail.

 All up, I used a lot of ShinHan markers, but I'm really happy with how they turned out. I used: Tender Pink, Barely Beige, Pastel Peach, Light Orange, Marigold, Golden Yellow, Warm Grey, Turquoise Blue, Clay, Pastel Green, Cherry Pink, Sap Green, Peony Purple, and Cerulean Blue Light. I also used the Blender Marker to make up some of the colours.

The ribbon was adhered using Mini Glue Dots, and the stamped images using Thin 3-D Foam Tape.

These were fun cards to make, and they turned out just like I expected after seeing the sample in the Ideas Book.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this, now, hop on over to Wendy's Blog, Paper, Ink & Bling and see what twist she has put on an idea.