Green and Grey Frog and Lilypad

This is one of my favourite cards that I've made over the past few weeks. It was made for a good friend (he was actually our best man).

I bought the stamp at the Sincerely Yours show at Lincoln from the Ali-Craft stall. They are a set of stamps made exclusively for them, and this particular character is called Filbert!!

This is also my entry to the following challenges:

• Cuttlebug Challenge - Garden Critters (the legged-variety)
• Caardvarks - Birthday Card
• Papertake Weekly - In The Garden
• Creative Card Crew - To Die For

So, to begin with I stamped the Filbert image, from the Angel Art Ugly Bugs Filbert stamp set, using Versafine Onyx Black archival pigment ink onto sage green card and cut him out. The eyes part of the image was stamped onto white card and the lilypad image was also stamped onto the sage green card and cut out.

The frog image was shaded using a selection of grey Copic markers, and the lilypad was coloured using yellow and grey Copic markers.

A white octagon was die cut using a Nestabilities die and the frog image was stamped in the centre of it so that the eyebrows can be seen. The cut out frog, eyes and lilypad were then adhered over the stamped image and the white octagon was then matted onto a sage green scalloped octagon, also cut out using a Nestabilities die.

The outside of the lilypad image was then highlighted using a blue Copic marker.

A panel of the green and grey plaid paper from the HOTP Heritage paper pad was matted onto the sage green card and attached to the card blank. White card candy from Craftwork Cards were added at the corners. Anita's 3D gloss was added to the eyes to highlight them.

What I didn't yet mention is that this is version two of my little frog - the first one had to be scrapped as the bottle of 3D gloss decided to explode all over the first one and wasn't recoverable!! And glossing the eyes was a bit of an afterthought and I was starting to think it was a really bad idea, but I was really pleased with the final result.