Moose You So Much

I noticed, the last time I sent cards to Operation Write Home, I had a dearth of "missing you," "birthday," and "thank you" cards. So I decided to make a greater effort to create more of those cards to send in. When I made this card, since I already had my Hero Arts "Missing You" stamp set out, I decided to create another card. This time, rather than color the image in, I decided to do some paper piecing. I've done that on the sheep from this set, but never on the moose. Turned out to be a little more challenging that I originally thought!

I began by choosing Sketch #119 from OWH. It is a simple design, which I felt would work well with the somewhat more complex paper-pieced moose.

I stamped the moose and greeting onto a piece of white cardstock, in Versafine Onyx Black ink, then die cut it with one of Spellbinders' "Standard Circles LG" dies. I also stamped the moose onto 3 different patterned paper scraps: one for the antlers, one for the nose, and a check pattern for the body & ears. I then cut out each section. The nose was pretty easy & straightforward to cut. Since the body included the ears, that was more difficult. One of the ears I had to cut out by itself. The antlers were also rather fiddly, since I had to cut around where the ears went and in and out of the top parts. Finally, I had all my cutting done, and glued each piece on the image I'd stamped on the white cardstock. I did leave the eyes white, and just colored in the hooves with a black pen.

To create the card front, I cut 2 pieces from patterned paper scraps on my desk to 1.75x4". I also punched a strip from a third piece with the Martha Stewart "Arch Lattice" border punch. I glued that behind the yellow paper, with the punched area just peeking out above the paper. Then I adhered my patterned papers in place on a kraft cardstock panel. After inking around my focal circle with Gathered Twigs Distress ink, I glued it on top of the patterned paper panels.

I applied adhesive with my ATG gun to the back of the kraft panel and went to glue it to an A2 card base. That's when I noticed the panel was about 1/4" shorter than said card base! Apparently I'd lined it up in my paper trimmer wrong. So I cut 2 strips from dark brown cardstock, and glued them to the top & bottom of the front of my card base. I adhered the front panel over those, and this card was done. I did add a little Glossy Accents to the moose's eyes, just for a bit of shine. I will be sending this card to Operation Write Home.

I'm entering my card in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes" challenge.