Comic Strip Card with Bella & Friends

Comic Strip Card with Bella & Friends

Retro Rubber Challenge was to create a card design using a stamp/stamps that was/were at least a year old.  The Challenge was called 'Anything Goes'.

This is a Stampin' Up stamp set called 'Bella and Friends', when I first saw this in the Stampin' Up 2017-2018 Catalogue I fell in love with it as I love critters.  It was the first stamp set that I purchased from Stampin' Up.  I have just been given three weeks off my chemotherapy regime by my Onocologist as I have been on chemotherapy constantly since June last year.  My hubby, Simon and I took the chance to get away.  We went to stay in the Borrowdale Gate Hotel, in Borrowdale, Cumbria.  It was such a lovely break, a new scenery always makes you feel better.  I suffered quite a lot from pain due to not sleeping in a hospital bed but extra morphine did help with that.  Pooch went to stay with my Bestie mate, Deana and her hubby Frankie.  I wanted to use the Bella and Friends stamp set to create a card for them to say "Thank You". 

I first trimmed a white card base (8 1/4 x 5 3/4" scored at 4 1/8") and a black card stock layer (5 7/8 x 3 5/8") and the final layer was a piece of Bristol Smooth White card stock (5 3/8 x 3 5/8").  Initially I laid out the stamp images onto the white card stock to see where they would fit.  Then I took a photograph with my mobile phone so I knew where they were going to go.  I then drew lines with a pencil very lightly around to create the comic book shapes.  Then I stamped the images using my Stampin' Up Stamparatus (this is a stamp positioning tool) to ensure that I got a really clean image of the critters as I was not going to colour these in. 

Then I used four different colours from my Spectrum Noir Alcohol Marker pen set for this project.  Very carefully I coloured around each of the images and up to the pencil lines.  The red I chose as the colour to be used in each of the comic shapes - it was on Bella's collar and heart and the heart shape being held by the parrot.  I also stamped an image of Bella inside the card, the one I could not fit on the front design and I stamped the parrot holding the red heart on the front of the envelope to extend the theme to all the elements of this card.  Now the pencil lines were outlined with a black gel pen and a ruler (the pencil lines were rubbed out when this had dried completely).  I used this also to brighten up the eyes and noses of the critters too.  My Wink of Stella was used to give some sparkle to the red hearts and Bella's collars. 

My final embellishment for this card was to stamp the sentiment "HUGZ" from my selection of sentiment stamps and heat emboss this with white embossing powder onto a scrap of black card stock.  I adhered this into the top left-hand corner of the front panel of the card. 

My friend loved the card and has offered to have our pooch, Alfie anytime.

Thank you to Hannah Jones, Stampin' Up Demonstrator for the inspiration to me to make this card.  I would like to thank you for coming onto my blog page to see this recent project and if you want to give me any feedback/comments that would be much appreciated.

Till next time, keep crafting!

Lorraine
:O)