SSS April 2017 Card Kit | Giraffe Wild About You Card

Alright, so here I go again - using up another Simon Says Stamp Card Kit way past the time it was released! It felt good to finally use some of these kits... although I really only made one card from each kit, but I can finally put all of the reusable supplies away and store the rest of the kit contents away for another day.

This is the April 2017 Card Kit - came out exactly one year ago (today is the last day of April... AND my birthday)! I originally waited to use this kit because SSS came out with matching dies, and I wanted to make the most of the kit so I waited until I could get the matching dies. By the time I did, the kit was "old news" and another had come out so it got pushed to the side. I love when SSS comes out with matching dies, especially for little critters like this with some intricate details... or even not just because I HATE fussy cutting. I buy a matching die for EVERY stamp because of it. I've heard of using the Scan 'N Cut, but it doesn't always read the image correctly, plus you've gotta get all set up, open the program, change settings, yade yada ya... in that time, I could just take out the matching die from the stamp set and quickly run it through a die cutter.

Another thing about this kit that kinda turned me off to it was that it included newly released Lawn Fawn papers that I had JUST ordered and received already. Although, it was nice having some matching cardstocks in the kit to take the guess work out of it. Anyway, the stamp set wasn't my favorite either, but now that I had the dies - I had to use it! Off all the animals, the Giraffe was my favorite. I think because I really only have one other giraffe stamp so it was exciting to pull him out, stamp and color him in. I had a little difficulty finding just the right Copic markers to color him in, between trying to make the right browns and oranges... when some images online showed giraffes as yellow?! Overall, I love the way he came out.

I chose some orange paper from my stash to match the giraffe and the purple from the kit to match the orange. I used one of the Lawn Fawn paper's and focused on the purple, blue, green colors when cutting the piece that I would use. I also used a card sketch to make up my layout. The stripes came from the patterned paper, the circle was the giraffe, and the mini circles were hearts and PPP Clear Sequins. I even tied in the stitched border shown in the card sketch.

Because I had selected the sentiment "Wild About You" from the stamp set, I decided to use the matching heart dies to cut out some hearts to pair up with the sequins to make it a looooovvveeee card :) I also finished off the card inside by stamping "I think I love you." It can be used as an everyday card, just because, thinking about you, anniversary, etc.

Thanks for stopping by! Happy crafting :)