It's Just a Birthday | By Jessica Shier

Hello Ai Fans!

It's Jessica here, and I'm back again to show you just how cute possums can be! We do have possums here in the Pacific Northwest and I've seen a few of them in person, mostly at night. I try to just avoid them. Since I had a Possum stamp to play with. I googled some photos for color inspiration and my GOODNESS possums can be quite cute when they want to be! Bonnie did an excellent job capturing their adorable side while illustrating these stamps. One of the little guys is hanging from a balloon which makes for a perfect little scene. 

There are a couple of steps to creating this simple scene. I stamped the balloon possum and the standing possum on to a piece of Neenah Solar White 80lb card stock that is already die cut with the third to largest Rectangle die. These critters are situated so that the balloon will be cut off of the scene.  To add that back in to the scene I stamped the ballon again on to a scrap piece of card stock. One of my favorite design choices when creating scenes is to add some kind of an element that will hang off of the focal point shape. Just like the balloon and clouds for this card.

After Copic coloring everything I decided that the possum hanging from the balloon really needed a gift in his paw. It's a drive by present toss... I guess even possums can social distance. 😄 The little present comes from the HM Birthday set. This set does have dies for all the images but I chose to fussy cut so that I didn't have a white border. 

I used a couple of cloud dies to die cut a light gray card stock and to tie in the sentiment. I also used a Echo Park stencil and a tone on tone technique using Gine K Dusty rose card stock and ink. I found that the Art Impressions Palette works GREAT for a stencil blending mat. I usually use a cutting mat but it's dirty. So put those palettes to use when your water coloring or stenciling!

For the inside I used the adorable curled up sleeping possum stamp and the coordinating sentiment that says " It's just a birthday no need to play dead." lol. 

Thank you so much for joining me today. Happy Stamping.