Hip Hip Hooray - House Mouse

Hi, Friends.......

I am here with a last-minute House Mouse entry for this fortnight. I had a lot of fun coloring up this celebratory little critter. I also used some fun Winnie & Walter stencils for their 5th Birthday Bash challenges.  

I also am entering this in the current Winnie & Walter Rerun Challenge where I was inspired by the balloons in Shay's card and the happy critters in each of the cards by Shay, Gayatri, and Heather!

I used several different background techniques for this card.

1. For the balloon background, I masked off the area over the image and stenciled using my new Distress Oxide ink pad in Tumbled Glass. Fun!!!  Then I shaded the edges with regular Distress Ink in Broken China, a slightly deeper blue.

2. For the pink card background, I stenciled with the Winnie & Walter star stencil using Distress Oxide in Spun Sugar and heat embossed with clear powder. I was hoping for a subtle effect.....but it was TOO subtle!!!  lol...   Now I never feel overly constrained to "follow the rules" of craft techniques......so I purposely overcooked the embossing powder to make a narrow halo around each star....just enough to accent them. You don't usually want a halo like this, but I did for this application.

3. I wanted more stars, so I also stamped some coordinating stars on the pink with white pigment ink. As you know, pigment ink stays wet a long time......even when you wield your heat gun at it. That's why I usually like to heat emboss pigment ink. But I wanted a soft matte finish for these white stars. So after I blasted them and they were still tacky here and there on the margins, I went ahead and heat embossed them with clear powder. It still looks matte, but the edges have a tiny bit of gloss. I like it.

Supplies used include:
Stampendous - House Mouse Designs - Confetti Fun stamp
Versafine ink in Smokey Gray
Distress Markers for watercoloring
Winnie & Walter - Big Balloon Cutaways die set
Winnie & Walter - Scenery: Triangled Creative Screenings
Winnie & Walter - Scenery: Big Bang Classic Star Creative Screenings
Distress Oxides in Tumbled Glass and Spun Sugar
Winnie & Walter - Scenery: Big Bang Confetti stamp set
Hero Arts - Unicorn White Pigment Ink
Clear embossing powder
Unity - "Hip Hip Hooray" (still trying to track down the Unity set this grab bag stamp came from.)
Canson - Mixed Media Paper Spiral Bound Notebook
Core'dinations/Darice Cardstock

Hope you like this happy card! Thank you for stopping by today.

❤
Janis

Thank you for the honor of entering this card in the following challenges:
1. House-Mouse Challenge #285 - Anything Goes HM w/ opt. of Weather
2. Winnie & Walter - Masking with Stencils Challenge
3. Winnie & Walter 5th Birthday Bash - Layering Die Cuts Challenge (I layered the balloon tie over the balloon end...as is intended with this set!)
4. Winnie & Walter 5th Birthday Bash - 3+ Stamp Set Challenge (I used W&W, Stampendous, and Unity)
5. Winnie & Walter 5th Birthday Bash - Customizing Die Cuts Challenge (I decorated up the balloon die cut)
6. Winnie & Walter Rerun #38 - Happy Dance
7. Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - AG
8. Word-Art Wednesday Week #376-377 - AG
9. Hero Arts National Craft Month - Fave Coloring Medium   (Hard to pick a fave, but I use Distress Markers a lot for coloring.  I do love them!!)