A Cat's Life

It's Monday and boy, I would sure love to have a cat's life right now, wouldn't you?  Nothing but playing, eating, frolicking,  napping, playing some more.  Of course I can't complain because in between holding down the fort at home, I do get to craft and pursue my artsy cravings!

Now that I'm back from my NYC and WV trip, I'm busy trying to get caught up on household projects and FINALLY maybe get my online craft shop up and running before all the Christmas rush!  It's been one roller coaster year, physically and mentally, and I'm hoping I can now make up for lost time.

And along with that, I have been trying to expand my comfort zone and try different crafting techniques and use different elements more often.  So, here I've experimented with some acrylic paint splattering for homemade DP paper.  I used Folk Art and delta acrylic paints and some Adriondack paint dabber, took a small artist paint brush, loaded it up with paint and some water and just flicked and splattered.  Then, I took my trusted heat gun and blasted it for quicker drying.  I cut the corners with a ticket corner punch.

I then used those adorable little cat stamps from Stampendous and stamped with Versamark and then embossing powder so they would stand out against the paint.  I tried a different method with the sentiment by just stamping it with archival black ink, coloring "life" in with a Copic marker and then went over the entire sentiment with Glossy Accents.  I like how the glossy accents gave it a more 2D effect.

Finally, I poked holes on either side of the sentiment to run the ribbon through, added the black gem dots along the ribbon and smaller ones along the bottom of the card then adhered it to the black card.  In keeping with the "three" approach, I added orange gem dots to each corner of the black card.

I originally had planned to post this card for last week's Retrosketch challenge, but just didn't happen.  However, I'm in time for the ColourQ challenge!

SPIES:
Stamps:  Cats (Stampendous); Sentiment (Autumn Leaves Stampology).
Paper:  White and black cardstock.
Ink:  Jet Black (Staz On); Black emboss powder; Pale Yellow, Lemon Custard, Sunset Orange acrylic paints.
Extras: Ticket punch; orange ribbon; black and orange gem dots.