Cats and Coffee?

But of course!

It's been a while since I made a card and this one counts double since it's for two challenges:

The Spring Coffee Lovers Blog Hop 

 and Challenge #43 over at Newton's Nook

I knew I wanted to use a Newton's Nook stamp set, but I didn't want to use a stamp from the Newton Loves Coffee stamp set in its original form.  I knew what I had to do when I saw the pot plant stamp set from Naughty Newton - I was going to have Newton knock over a cup of coffee.

This was going to be quite the exercise in masking.

In a nutshell, when masking you need to work from the part of the image most in front and work backwards.

To start with, I stamped a few of the Naughty Newton images in StayzOn on the masking sheets (and the cup from Newton Loves Coffee) and cut them according to the different stages of the stamping and masking.  Newton's front paws were going to prove interesting!

 

Alignment was a bit tricky since I've become used to using a stamp press.  It meant I had to trace over some parts which didn't stamp well.

 

When it came to the cup, I covered the lid of the stamp with some scrap masking sheet, inked it and peeled it off the stamp prior to stamping (hard to see in this picture)

Ok so the imperfect masking and stamping mean we're going to have to use darker colours when colouring!!

Now that we have paws and a cup, both the mask for the cup and the one for the pot need to be layered so this area remains protected when the rest of the image gets stamped.

At this point I decided the dirt with the flowers spilling from the pot sort of looked like coffee with some flowers floating in it so I decided to leave that.

I needed to extend the spill a bit by hand, but it still looked a bit lumpy like dirt.  Drawing has never been my strength which is why I stamp!

To stamp the coffee lid, I did the opposite of stamping the cup.  Now time to colour!  I'm glad I chose Copic markers so I could use darker colours to cover the imperfections.

Yes I know the light source isn't exactly consistent, but nevermind!  I used a Memento marker to go around the white cut edges and also the fussy cut flowers.  I also added a tiny heart from one of the stamp sets to the cup to tie in with the cup print paper.

I sketched some sloped lines on scrap cardstock to use as a template for the sketch, but most seems to have been covered!

Because of the darker colours I had to use paper with similar ones and it doesn't exactly scream "Spring" does it?  The cup print from Shimelle's True Stories 6x6 paper pad was a little more spring-like.  The polka dot is also from True Stories and cloud print from Go Now Go.  I fussy cut the smallest flowers from a couple of the Starshine paper pad in order to add a bit more "Spring" to the card.

The sentiment is from a Verve stamp set.  Newton has indeed been naughty...and jealous since he changed it with his best paw-writing.  (He makes no apologies for it because he doesn't have opposable thumbs!).