MFT Sketch Challenge 400

Hello again! Welcome to the first post on my blog for the month of September! I'm back with another entry for a My Favorite Things challenge, this time sketch instead of color. This is my entry for the MFT Sketch Challenge 400 as well as the current Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge. The sketch provided for this week's card was the following:

Image courtesy of MFT Challenge Blog

Very sadly, I only have two MFT stamps sets (need to rectify ASAP!), and since I just used one of them, "Bubble Over With Joy," for the last challenge, I thought I should use my other one, "I Knead You" for this challenge. I've already made at least one card where the focal point was the repetition of the small images from this set. They're just so cute, and they're classic cat icons! So I thought I would like to make vertical lines out of repeating those small stamps.

I also thought of a few other decorative ways I could add vertical stripes. Washi one of the frontrunners, but I decided to use my favorite medium lately, watercolors! Using my Mijello Mission Gold watercolors, I made a five-color rainbow using just a swipe or two from a small-medium flat brush.

I then picked the stamps I wanted to stamp over the watercolor stripes. I surprised myself by picking one of the kitties, but he was so vertical (well, horizontal at the time lol) and cute I just had to. So, once the watercolors were thoroughly dry, I stamped one of the mice, the sleeping cat, the fish, the fishbone, and the other mouse respectively from right to left.

I knew from the start I didn't want to color the stamped images; I wanted the watercolor stripes to be the main focus, but I felt it could use a little more dimension, so I used one Polychromos colored pencil per image (the one that I felt most closely matched a "shaded" version of the watercolor stripe behind it) to give some areas just a little bit of shadow and dimension.

For the sentiments, I decided to combine "I love mew" with "You left a paw print on my heart. I stamped "you left a paw print..." with Versafine black ink and heat embossed with with Ranger clear embossing powder. For "I love mew," I simply white heat embossed in on a black piece of card stock, cut the inside edge into the little banner shape inspired by the original sketch, then adhered it below my previously embossed sentiment.

That's it for the relatively simple card. It was almost one layer if it hadn't been for that pesky black card stock sentiment I just can't NOT use for some reason. 😂 Have you played along with this week's challenge? I'm cutting it closer to the deadline than I normally like, so I'm sure I'll be one of the last ones playing. Happy crafting everyone!