Paper Smooches December Challenge - Card 2

Paper Smooches - www.papersmoochesstamps.com has a monthly challenge and here is my second entry.  I thought I'd also use the opportunity to sneak in some peeks at the upcoming Stampin' Up! Occasions Catalogue which starts on 5 Jan.

The main guidelines are to use flowers somewhere on the project and include at least one Paper Smooches die or stamp.

I didn't intend to make 2 cards but I really REALLY wanted to sneak a cat among the flowers and it just wasn't right for the first card.

I loved the colours in the soon-to-come Love Blossoms DSP stack.  The flowers came from the Circle of Spring set in the Annual Catalogue which naturally I bought without the die thinking I wouldn't use it til I got around to buying the die.  Wrong.  Hello fussy cutting,  Have you tried fussy cutting tiny flowers and vines inside a circle?  My advice is...don't!

The cat came from the MFT I Knead You stamp set.  I also fussy cut her since I didn't want a white outline.  The whiskers do have a little one and I initially thought of colouring them black, but I coloured the the kitty to look like our very own Chubby Bubby Crafty Cat and she actually has both white and black whiskers.

 Since the images were smaller, I used Inktense to colour it and just washed over the white areas of the wreath with leftover Gansai Tambi.  The awesome thing is that the Inktense becomes permanent once it dries so it doesn't run when re-wet.

My initial thought was a blank Paper Smooches banner from the streamers stamp set but it felt too big so a stamp from the soon-to-come Bloomin Love set was used.  I wanted to cover up the leaves which stamp on either side of the banner.  They'd go with the card, but it needed more pink and more bling (doesn't everything??).

I felt hearts would go well with the sentiment but the hearts in the Hearts dies set were either too small or too big (Goldilocks much?) but the heart from the set of Bandaids Dies was just right - well near enough.

The sentiment came from the Good Gab stamp set and the bows on the wreath and Miss CC's hair came from the Retail Therapy stamp set.  Lots of small touches, but I used one die and two stamp sets from Paper Smooches on this one.

The card base has layers of DSP either square or die cut and corners rounded which I'm not so sure about now that I've done it!

Oh and lets not forget the touches of Wink of Stella, which while I've had in my stash for a long time, may or may not have something to do with the upcoming catalogue. ;-P

 And bling. I added a few gems but could happily add about 20 more.  LOL

I'm counting SIX items I've sneaked from the Occasions Catty between the two cards!
I'm happy overall with these two cards which usually doesn't happen so there you go.

If you havent already seem my first card, please check it out here