Like mom, like daughter

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It's the Monday after Easter and I don't know about you but I think I'm still stuffed from our dinner on Sunday. Easter has been celebrated and I'm so thankful for it's meaning. It's the best holiday I think my family and I celebrate, but second to that are birthday's. Wait, I think there is a tie, Mother's Day really must be the second as well. I'm saying all this because my card today is Ballet Matilda from DigiStamp Boutique and she's taking on a mother and daughter role. She is part of the Offer of the Month at a special discount price. You can also buy her individually, but why? All of them are so cute!

When I saw this dancing mouse I knew I had to work on the ruffles of her tutu and make them special. Not once, but twice! It is after all a card about a mother and a daughter.

Before I get started in on the details are a couple of DigiStamp NEED TO KNOW items.

The Offer of the month at DigiStamp Boutique (DSB) is the discounted set of the month and Sally-Ann has decided to bring back her wonderful monthly competition on the DSB blog. Use any image from the Offer of the month on a card and let her know about it on the blog post, then you are entered in a prize drawing for the next month's Offer of the Month. Your card can be used in any other challenge, Just in case I forgot any details, go to the DSB blog.


If you are quick you can also still get a 10% discount as an Easter treat at the DSB store. Hurry, I bet it ends at midnight UK time zone! {wink}


This is how I did it.
Let's start from the base up. I used Wausau Royal Fiber Chocolate cardstock from my local paper shop (see my sidebar) and cut it as a 5 1/2 x 11 sheet and scored it in half. I'll create a matching envelope with my scoring board later. Then I searched for some cheerful flowery paper and found what I was looking for in Me & My Big Ideas "Sassy" paper pack ($4.97 for 32 sheets at Big Lots).

If this doesn't sound silly, I actually did a Google search on mice colors and markings and I found this amazing site of copyright protected photos here. I fell in love with the Recessive Yellow mouse photo and that's where I was inspired for my Matilda's. I use MS PowerPoint almost always to position and print the images. It's easy to right click and get the size of the image and resize to a certain height or width, crop away any white space around it for getting the images close together and it's a pretty simple program to use. For Matilda I used the original size and then reduced and mirrored the second image for the "daughter" mouse. I copied both of the images a couple of times and cropped down to the flowers and tutu's for my layers, so I wouldn't waste paper or printer ink.

For the coloring I used my Prismacolor markers and detailed in with pencils. I really wanted to show the darker hair strands and that's the way to do it for me. You can get the colors I used at the bottom of this post.

I might have started off too soon with the size and shape of my card, because I didn't have a sketch in mind, but Mercy Kerin's Tuesday sketch (MTSC67) saved the day. I tried to stay with the sketch but I wasn't in the mood for stitching so I found some double stitched ribbon to go in it's place and then added ribbon and buttons until I thought it framed the images well enough and met the rest of the sketch.

I wanted to emboss the "Mom" from Verve's All Because of You, but I didn't have the right color of powder, so I just stamped it with Chocolate Chip on a darker pink CS and clear embossed it. This is where I added to the sketch layout. When I grabbed this Verve set I saw another sentiment that I had to use to finish off the thought I put into the Matilda image.

Now doesn't that make for a great Mom's Day card?

Okay, because I'm just tickled about my tutu's, here's the layer's view of the front of the card.

I cut around the bottom and side of the tutu against the image lines and then gave myself some fold over space at the waist, about 1/16th of an inch. I used the sharp tip of my SU snip scissors to score on the waist, but it cut the paper just a little which ended up okay because it help the fold bend cleaner. I glued the waist to the main image with Glossy accents and then used a dimenional foam to help keep the hemline popped up. I repeated this for the top ruffle of the tutu and again for the second Matilda.

Thanks for staying with me on all my details.


Details:
Stamps: DigiStamp Boutique Ballet Matilda, Verve All Because of You
Paper: WRF Chocolate CS, M&MBI Sassy PP, Pink Passion, LSS Pink
Ink: LaserJet, Prismacolor Markers and Pencils*, SU! Chocolate Chip
Accessories: Offray Orange Cream Satin Ribbon, Dashes-Dots and Checkers Blue stitched ribbon, Buttons, Singer Orange embroidery thread (Target a while back), Oval Nestibilities, SU! Oval punch and EK Success Flower punch, Clear embossing powder, OMS.

Prismacolor Details (Pencil in parentheses): Matilda  Fur - Wheat, Mocha Light, Colorless Blender (Sepia, Light Umber); Nose and Paws - Deco Pink and Wheat; Flower - (Pink, Magenta, Orange, Pale Vermillion); Tutu - (Pink, Process Pink, Magenta); Background top to bottom - Muted Turquoise, Cloud Blue, Mint Cream, Chartreuse, Mocha Light, Mocha Dark, Sepia.

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