Hello crafty friends. I’ve swung back to autumn today with my design team card for our new theme of N for Nocturnal Animal at Alphabet Challenge. I do love the Feathered Friends stamps, and this owl is so characterful – I think he may be on the lookout for his supper! I sat him on a branch of autumn leaves against one of the Autumn/Winter Skies toppers to add to the nocturnal vibe.

First, I needed to sort out my branch. I reached for the Branches, Twigs & Sprigs stamps and first stamped the branch across the topper, which is one of the smaller ones. I then took the leafy sprig, mounted it on a stamp pen and inked it up with a combination of ‘peeled paint’ and ‘crackling campfire’ Archivals. This is so easy to do with the stamp pens, as you can fairly accurately tap each end of the stamp onto the different colour inkpads before stamping into place, letting you blend the colours together.

I then stamped my owl onto a piece of super smooth paper, coloured him with Polcychromo pencils and fussy cut him. He nestled into place on my branch with the help of a Pritt glue stick and I added one of the Bijou Sentiments below him. I took a 5×5 card blank and embossed a frame onto it with a square embedder (I had to lengthen it slightly to accommodate my topper). Finally, I added a mount of dark blue companion paper and attached the topper to my card.

Don’t you love this pensive owl? What nocturnal creatures have you got hiding away in your stash? Maybe it’s time to let them see the light of day and visit our gallery at Alphabet!

I took additional inspiration from a few other challenges for this card too, starting with the sketch at The Paper Players. I’ve also picked up the ‘wings’ theme from Double D and the autumn leaves on the photo prompt at Inkspirational.