Dang! The blog got a little dusty, didn’t it?!? Well, this world sometimes throws things at you that are of higher importance than crafting and hops, so you just have to respect that and try to adjust. Right? But we’re back now and full of crafty ideas. For those who have no idea what all this hop business I’m talking about is, my crafty friends and I (affectionately known as the Squirrel Squad) are on a mission to bash the stuff in our stash… you know, use all the things we’ve squirreled away and neglected. We usually have a monthly theme and then challenge ourselves to use either a specific supply or a technique we don’t do often enough. This month we are just focusing on the technique… CASE’ing. Before I explain further and share my card, I want to give you the full hop list so you don’t get lost… though with only 6 of us, you should be able to hoppity-hop through faster than a bunny!

• Karen Page – YOU ARE HERE
• Lounon Riviere
• Boryana Yankova
• Anna Mahtani
• Marie Bingaman
• V Fairchild

This month our theme is to CASE (Copy And Selectively Edit *or* Copy And Share Everything) another crafter in the Squirrel Squad. Basically you pick a card to CASE and use it as your inspiration to make a card of your own. It was decided that I would be CASE’ing sweet Lounon of Craft Me, Craft Moi. I could select any of her amazing cards to CASE, but that was super intimidating because she creates SO many spectacular scene cards with Copic backgrounds and *that* is definitely not one of my skills. I selected a fairly CAS card she created recently for LDRS. Have a look at her card:

Gorgeous, right? Thankfully Lounon occasionally makes cards that aren’t Copic scenes! When I saw this card, I thought I could easily work with the sketch, and use one of the many floral stamps I own. From there, I put my own spin on the card trying to keep the inspiration obvious. Here is my take:

As you can see, I stuck closely to the sketch. Since I broke from the almost monochromatic color scheme Lounon used, I added a thin mat as I felt I need a little contrast to separate the yellow focal panel from the white background. My floral image is from Jane’s Doodles Daisies set, as is the cute bee. I watercolored the images with Tombow markers, a medium I am more comfortable with than alcohol markers. Now, I gotta be honest and tell you I tried to no-line color the images like Lounon did, but *that too* is not a skill I have and I reverted to the safety of line images. The pattern on the yellow rectangle is a CAC (Cover A Card) background stamp from Impression Obsession called Flower Garden. For the strip, I opted to dry emboss mine instead of stamping like Lounon had done. The sentiment, chosen for its bold and scripty look to match Lounon’s card, is from MFT’s Brushstroke Expressions. I did stamp surgery to separate the words to arrange them in 2 lines vs 1 to suit my needs, but I cut it so that it will piece back together easily to use as it was intended. (Side note: I will never buy another brushstroke sentiment again as it always looks like I got a bad stamping from it!)

I don’t have many stitched dies, and none in the sizes I wanted, so I didn’t add stitched details to the layers like Lounon, but instead I inked the edges to help define them. And since I varied from the color scheme she used, I opted to add a sprinkling of epoxy dots to add even more color. To finish it off, the images were popped up on foam tape and the wings and eyes of the bees were shimmered with Wink of Stella. Why, oh why, is it so hard to photograph shimmer and glitter?!?

I was seriously intimidated to CASE my dear friend Lounon as she is beyond talented. I tell her often that it is just a matter of time before she is “craft famous” and I mean it with all my heart. (To be honest, CASE’ing *any* of the Squirrel Squad would be intimidating because each is so talented in their own ways!) While it is obvious that I used Lounon’s card for inspiration, it is equally obvious that she is a far more gifted artist. That said, I was fairly pleased with how my card came out, especially considering I’ve been on a crafting sabbatical for 2 months *and* that I haven’t used watercolor markers in over a year! I feel incredibly rusty and I don’t like that, but I don’t see a way to change that much for the time being. But I am ever so thankful that my Squirrel Sisters motivate me to craft at least once a month!

That’s it for me today, but be sure to head on to Lounon’s blog to see how she CASE’d Bory!

Thank you so much for dropping by and taking a couple minutes to visit the rest of the Squirrel Squad! I’m eager to hop along myself to see what cards they picked to CASE and how they put their own spin on them. There is so much talent in this little group… don’t miss out!