This is the second card that we created at our outdoor stamp club session a couple of weeks ago. For this one I wanted to highlight some Sale-A-Bration products and the Hippest Hippo stamps and coordinating dies were just too cute to pass up. The nice thing about hippos is that they are really easy to color; a couple of shades of grey and you’re good to go. For this cutie I used the Gray Granite blends for the snout and belly and the Smoky Slate blends for the body. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! A quick trip to the die cut machine to cut it out and you’re off to the races. The sunglasses come in the coordinating dies, I just cut them out twice: once in Poppy Parade for the frames and once in Basic Black to get the lenses. The trickiest bit is keeping track of the small pieces until you get a chance to glue them down.
The patterned paper that I used for the matted layer is also a Sale-A-Bration freebie called “Rings of Love”. I absolutely adore the patterns in this paper and I definitely encourage you to check it out if you haven’t looked at it. The designs are really great for so many different seasons and occasions, and I’m looking forward to using some more real soon. I bet that I’ll be able to use a few sheets in some birthday cards for the church card ministry!
I used this card sketch as the inspiration for my card layout. The center circle on mine is smaller than the one on the sketch, but this allows more of the pretty plaid paper to show! I also think that the hippo is the star, and having a smaller background doesn’t detract from the coolness of this hippo dude (or perhaps dudette)!
All three of the Sale-A-Bration products that I used are still available (I check while I was writing this post). However, they will definitely not be available after the end of this month since that is the end of the promotion. Also, all of the Sale-A-Bration products are available “while supplies last”, so if there’s something that you want, don’t delay. You can check out the available products here.
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