Happy anniversary

... to my wonderful husband ❤️  One of the things I love best about having returned to crafting the past 18 months is that I am now back to making "special" cards for him for birthday, Christmas and anniversaries ... I'm not especially imaginative when it comes to thinking of original ideas for men's cards, but I love sitting down to make the effort.  

Here is an 8 x 8 inch Lavinia card I made for him, featuring the cute hedgies "Wallace Family".

I used various circle, hill and cloud masks to create a blended scenescape with  Distress oxide inks, then stamped my hedgies, trees, flowers and foliage using various shades of Versafine Clair and highlighted the sun and hedgies with Sakura Stardust pens. I background stamped my heart script, though I had to cut out my original circle panel and mount onto a separate background square, as the first attempt at masking my original blended circle did not stamp properly!! I stamped foliage using my large circle mask then attached my image panel, and stamped my sentiments before matting everything simply on dark green card stock.

I must admit that although acetate masks are ideal for ink blending, I do struggle when stamping using them, as the thickness of the mask means that the image doesn't stamp right to the edge of the masked area ... I have ended up hand cutting paper circle masks for stamping but it isn't ideal - I would welcome any feedback on how any one approaches this.

I also decorated the envelope to match ... only noticed after I had taken the pic that I had not "grounded" the hedgies, so I sorted that out afterwards!

Stamps: Lavinia - Wallace Family, Forest Scene, Trees, Skeleton Tree Scene, Bluebells, Birds, Single Heart Mini, Mini Leaf 1, Background Script; Anniversary sentiment - Woodware; Husband sentiment - Fizzy Moon;

Media: Tim Holtz Distress Oxide inks (Mowed Lawn, Rustic Wilderness, Iced Spruce, Tumbled Glass, Squeezed Lemonade, Fossilized Amber); Versafine Clair (Nocturne, Pinecone, Rainforest, Green Oasis, Warm Breeze, Golden Meadow, Tulip Red); Versafine (Sepia, Majestic Blue); Sakura Stardust pens (yellow, clear);

Tools: Press to Impress large circle mask; Lavinia circle and hill masks; home made cloud mask.

Challenges I would like to enter:

Crafts Galore Encore #103 - Anything Goes 

Crafty Animals #65 - Anything Goes With an Animal

Crafty Calendar (September) - Anything Goes

Dare 2B Artzy (September) - Animals 

Love To Craft #70 - Anything Goes 

Love To Scrap #157 - Anything Goes 

Moving Along With the Times #146 - Trees and/or Leaves

Sheepski #66 - Feature a Creature

Simon Says (Wednesday) - Little Critters

We Love Stamping (September) - Anything Goes With Stamping

Word Art Wednesday #561/562 - Anything Goes

We'll be having a day of relaxation today with a meal out tonight. so I'm hoping it will be a lovely day!

Take care, and thanks for visiting.

Hugs,