CUTE CREW

I must admit that, as I was paging through the current Occasions Catalog, the item on page 32 that had caught my eye initially was the Nine Lives stamp set at the top of the page. After all, I am a lifelong cat lover and I do have the cat punch. I put it on my Wish List, where it still is. (Hey! I just noticed that it's only $16!)

Recently though I started to pay a bit more attention to the entire page, starting to focus more on the Cute Crew Punch Box set on the lower half of the page.

The first thing to attract me is the precious tin storage box in which all the goodies come. Looking around a bit more at the photos and reading the contents of the set sold me. With the exception of the Black Archival Stampin' Spot, which I forgot for my photo, this shows everything that comes in the kit. Pretty impressive, isn't it? So, order it I did! By merely adding another $5 to my order, I also got a free Sale-A-Bration goodie! Win-win!

When I first received my set, I did make a few tags using the stamps as they were meant to be used and punched out with the cute punch. However, being that each of the stamps have a sentiment -- Happy Birthday, Thank You, For You, Thinking of You, You're the Best and Way to Go -- I wanted to be able to use the characters on the stamps in their own right.

I stamped each of the images onto Whisper White cardstock with Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored them with Stampin' Blends, attempting to maintain something of a cohesive color palette. 

Then, I did what I so love to do. I fussy cut each of the images, trimming off the sentiments. There! Now I had six adorable animals to do with as I pleased.

The results were the following two cards.

The next two photos show how they look close-up and popped up with Stampin' Dimensionals atop little Stitched Shapes squares in Pool Party to keep with the Pool Party color scheme I'd used in my Blend-ing.

I took a scrap of the gingham DSP I'd used underneath my animals to die cut the word "smile".This was added to a shadow of the same word, die cut from Pool Party.

The cards, even though they have lots of dimension, would go through the mail just fine. I am so happy when that happens.

I love the Dot to Dot Textured Impressions Embossing Folder on the bottom of page 25 in the Occasions Catalog. Since it is very very busy, and I desperately wanted to use it in these cards, I opted to use a 2 1/4" strip at the bottom of my cards. By covering up this smaller strip with the sentiment and ribbon, I think I succeeded in cutting down the "excitement" of the embossing somewhat. 

To add the Lemon Lime Twist Sale-A-Bration organdy ribbon behind the sentiment, I simply cut a piece of the ribbon about twice as long as I needed, folded both the ends towards the center, securing them in place with Glue Dots, and adding a few more Glue Dots to adhere it to the word "smile". I then used Stampin' Dimensionals on the back of this entire unit to add it to the card.

The two cards side by side:

Do you ever do anything like I did with these stamps -- completely alter them in their looks as well as their intended usage? It's a great way to get even more love out of your investment!

Altered

Smiles.