Hello crafty friends. It’s Friday and so time for another new challenge theme – this week’s it’s the turn of Alphabet and I got to set the theme of Z for Zoology! It gave me another excuse (like I needed one!) to play with the Little SHAC Birds – this time I’ve added in the Ivy Trellis Panel stencil and the Bijou Tall Feel Good sentiments to my design, pulling it all together with another of the Colour Cube palettes.

I’ve done this as a one layer card – no additional toppers! I didn’t have a card blank that was the right dimensions for the stencil, so I cut a 5×7 blank down to 3.5×7 (which made it the same width as the overall stencil), ran low tack tape down the right hand side to repeat the frame and laid the ivy panel over it, securing it with low tack tape. I then used stencil brushes to blend ‘stormy sky’ and ‘mowed lawn’ Distress Oxides across it.

I wanted to sit the birds amongst the ivy, but couldn’t just stamp & colour them as the detail of the stencil pattern would show through. I did consider trying to stamp them first and mask before inking through the stencil, but the positioning all got a bit tricky! Instead, I stamped them into place on the card front, then stamped a second set on Clarity’s super smooth paper. These ones I coloured with Polychromo pencils, blending ‘rose carmine’ & ‘madder’ plus ‘permanent green olive’ & ‘pine green’. Once done, I fussy cut them all, leaving off their beaks and tails which were too fiddly!

I then glued them all into place over the stamped images using Pritt stick. The final touch was to simply add a couple of the Feel Good sentiments

These little birds just have so much attitude, don’t you think? I love them and I’m going to share the love a bit further with the current challenges at Triple B and Stencil Fun!