Aloha, all!
Taking a break from Thanksgiving today, I'm back to sharing one of my Christmas Cards – because it's time for the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge biweekly post. And the challenge this time is to show off some Holiday Cuteness. And aren't these little Christmas Mousies cute?!
When it comes to "Holiday Cuteness" and "Stampin' Up!" this year, there is one Stampin' Up! stamp set that reaches out and grabs me every time I think "cute." The set is called Merry Mice and it's in the Stampin' Up! 2016 Holiday Catalog. Not only that, until November 30th, Merry Mice is on sale! It's 25% off, so it's $12.75 for the clear mount set and the wood mount set is just $17.75. To buy either set, just click on a graphic at the end of this post!
Besides being just so cute, these little guys and gal give me something to color! And I do love coloring. As an aside, I've not ever bought one of those adult coloring books for myself because, if I want to color, I just go to my stamp shelf and find an outline stamp to stamp! What could be easier than that?
But back to the mice. The original has the little critters marching along to the right with their holiday decorations and goodies. But when I first saw the stamp, I wondered how I'd use them if I wanted them to march to the left. That really was a passing thought – for a while. Then it came time for this challenge. I really wanted to use the Merry Mice Stamp Set, but I imagined that others in the Design Team would be using it, too, even though there are other truly cute stamps to use this year. So what could I do that was different? Aha! That idea of making the mice march to the left grabbed me and wouldn't let go.
It's been a long time since I made a mirror image of a stamp, and usually that has been to form a reflection as in a body of water. In that case, I don't really have to be that careful to get all the stamping clean. But I tried it anyway, stamping the mice first on a piece of smooth plastic (one side of my Stamp-a-ma-jig plastic). Then I laid my Whisper White Cardstock over the stamped image and pressed down on it – lightly at first and then with a firmer smoothing motion. Those lines weren't as clean as the original stamp, but tracing along them with my Basic Black Stampin' Write Marker helped the lines out a bit. Not perfect, but it was going to do, especially when I started coloring the critters and their clothes in.
The final touches for this card, after mounting this image first on Garden Green then Real Red Cardstock, was to add some Enamel Dots. I added a star to the tip of each of the mice at the back of the line and then some small dots at either end of the piece of cardstock on which I'd stamped the sentiment.
This not only was definitely fun, but it also got the mirrored mouse brigade idea out of my head! Once is definitely enough, and now I'll go onto some other crazy idea! Meanwhile, check out the other Design Team Members' projects at suochallenges.com. At least one card has just one of these little mice on it. That's fun, too – and that might be my next try at using this stamp set – quickly becoming my favorite for this holiday season!
