Gallery Idol Round 3

I wanted to thank everyone for all the visits, comments, and votes for my Paper Crafts Magazine's Gallery Idol Round 2 card! It means so much to me! I was beyond excited to move on to the Top 15 round. Thank you!!

When I found out about making it through to the third round, I was out of state for work. It was hard to focus during my all-day meeting (which was particularly bad since I was leading the meeting!). I made it home Friday night and got to work right away. The theme for Round 3 is to make one masculine card and one feminine card, and Holly instructed us to use the same stamp or paper.

I used the digital panda stamp from the Hero Arts' Adorable Creatures set:

Isn't it too cute? Here are the masculine and feminine cards I created using this stamp:

Yep, it's the same stamp. The first step was recoloring the grey body white. After that, I went through about 186 steps to make each card. I'll save you the nitty gritty details, but we'll just say there was some definite trial-and-error.

First, I worked on the feminine card...I wanted it to look more like a teddy bear. I enlarged the stamp to create the shaped card, and while I used Photoshop, you could also enlarge a stamp using a copier.

Since the pink houndstooth paper is digital, I was able to use a trick to save a cutting step. I recolored the background and the body in a slightly darker color, which provided enough contrast for me to see the paws/ears/eyes for fussy cutting. This way, I didn't have to make patterns and cut the papers twice. I went around the edges of the paws and ears with a marker.

I made the little hair bow using a bow tie tutorial on Heidi Van Laar's blog. I also made the pinwheel by stamping the pinwheel image twice--once in yellow and once in Versamark on the pink paper. I fussy cut both and coated them with glitter. The handle is a 1/16" dowel that I painted and added glitter. The pinwheel is functional and does turn (it doesn't spin, but it does turn). Here's a close-up:

Next up is the masculine card. I thought about surf, space, and western themes, but decided to make a superhero hybrid card:

I started with a white base, colored the background blue, and added a digital half-tone overlay from the Super collection to get the cool background (I used "soft light" instead of "overlay"). I added my own sentiment.

For the skyline, I used the Hero Arts Silly Scape stamp and stamped it twice in black. Then, I went back and selected all of the non-window areas one-by-one to recolor them dark grey (I wanted just a little contrast from the outline). Talk about carpal tunnel! I fussy cut the skyline and intentionally didn't ink the white edges (it added a little more contrast). Here's a close-up:

Lastly, I focused on the panda. Other than recoloring his body white, I simply printed him out and fussy cut him. I made little Underoos and a red satin cape for him. My husband helped me figure out the cape (complete with a 10 minute explanation on the physics of wind), so the cape ended up wavy to look like movement. I heat set the edges of the satin (yes, after the first cape, I realized this was a very important step!). Here's a close-up:

I skipped several steps, but if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I did a lot of trial-and-error, so I'm not sure what I did was the most efficient, but I'd be happy to answer any questions.

There's a vote for the Top 10. If you like my card, I would be thrilled if you would vote for me! You can click on the link at the top of the sidebar to vote or go HERE and vote (I'm #5). Thank you!!

Thanks for your support, and have a great day!

Supplies

You're Sweet Panda Card

Cardstock: (Sweet Tooth) Stamp School

Patterned Paper: (yellow gingham) Pink Petticoat, UK; (pink houndstooth from Quilting Bee papers) Robyn Meierotto at Design House Digitals

Specialty Paper: (premium matte photo paper) Office Max

Digital Stamps: (panda from Adorable Creatures) Hero Arts

Clear Stamps: (pinwheel from Life of the Party) Hero Arts

Inks: Versamark; (Canary) Versacolor

Accessories: (Hibiscus Burst button) PTI; (brad from This and That Graceful) Echo Park

Glitter: Martha Stewart

Other: wooden dowel

You're Super Panda Card

Cardstock: (Sweet Tooth) Stamp School; (red, yellow) Bazzill

Specialty Paper: (premium matte photo paper) Office Max

Digital Stamps: (panda from Adorable Creatures; skyline from Silly Scape) Hero Arts at Two Peas in a Bucket

Digital Overlay: (half-tone from Super collection) Splendid Fiins at Jessica Sprague

Other: red satin fabric