When I saw the Octopi My Heart set from Lawn Fawn, I just had to get it! I immediately knew that I wanted to make my daughter’s preschool Valentines with this set, as we had been reading a fun library book called “My Octopus Arms” which prompted her to talk about how much more I could do with eight arms. “Mommy, if you had eight arms you could fix all those broken toys in one night!” “Mommy, did you know that if you had eight arms you could cut up all that food really fast so that we could eat sooner and my tummy wouldn’t rumble because it’s hungry?” Apparently I’m not enough quick with the two measly ones I have – ha! Also, even though she loves to play robots with her brother and dig in the dirt to find bugs, she just might be the girliest girl ever. And I tried to set a pretty high bar when I went through my pink phase – I literally only wore varying shades of pink, and refused to wear pants or shorts even though I rode my bike to school everyday.
Anyway, when thinking of a design, I knew that I wanted a flat card base with some added dimension. I looked at my stash of paper (okay, fine – it’s more like stashES), and decided to use this bright razzle berry 100 lb cardstock by Poptone. I cut the cardstock down into A2 size flat cards and used my MISTI to line up the sentiment for assembly line stamping. I gave these to my daughter to write her name on the back of the cards before I added any dimension to the front.
I stamped that adorable octopus 20+ times onto some 80 lb Neenah cardstock with Simon Says Stamp Intense Black ink and then used a variety of alcohol markers to color in the images with my very basic coloring skills. I wanted to create some dimension with the markers and used Copic V12, V15, and V17 for the octopus; and Spectrum Noir PL5 for the dark spots. I also used a Sakura white Gelly Roll pen to add white dots for the suckers on the legs, a Sakura black Glaze pen for the eyes, and a Sakura Micron 0.1 pen to add some girly eyelashes. After the eyes had completely dried, I cut out all the octopi with the coordinating die. I used the bow/tie die from the same set to cut out some bows from silver American Crafts adhesive glitter paper & adhered them onto the side of their heads.
I wanted to build a little framed water scene for the octopus, so I went back to my paper stash and found some smooth Core’dinations cardstock in citrus teal and powder blue, 105 lb Aspire Petallics shimmer cardstock in snow willow, and Bazzill baby blue vellum. I used the second largest die (about 3.5″ diameter) from Lawn Fawn’s Scallop Circle Stackables to cut the powder blue Core’dinations cardstock for the sky background. I used the second largest die from the My Favorite Things Stitched Circle Scallop Frames set, which measured about 3.25″ diameter, to cut the white shimmer cardstock frames. I chose this size because it would fit nicely on top of the scalloped sky to frame the water and octopus, yet allow some of those scallops to peek out behind it.
I used the 3″ die from the Nesting Circles set by Lifestyle Crafts to cut out both the citrus teal cardstock and the vellum. I really like using this blue vellum for water layers because the color is subtle enough to mimic the translucence of water. For both of these layers I then used two of the dies from Mama Elephant’s Ocean Waves Trio set to create different heights of waves. I wanted the taller solid wave to be behind the octopus and the shorter see-through vellum wave to be in the front. By cutting the circles first, I was able to make sure that these layers would adhere (and be hidden) behind the white scallop frames, and I could choose the placement of the peaks of the waves.
I applied a very thin line of Ranger Multi Medium Matte to the back of the vellum piece along the curved edge. I placed it on top of the solid wave piece and covered it with an acrylic block to dry. I did the same with the two attached water layers, except I put the adhesive on the front since it was going behind the shimmery scallop frame. Once those three layers were adhered and the liquid adhesive was dry, I took some 1/8″ scor-tape and went around the entire back of the frame and placed it on top of the solid scalloped sky. I stamped the two hearts with Hero Arts tide pool dye ink toward the left side to allow room for the octopus.
I used 3M foam tape to pop up the whole thing onto the pink card bases, trying to center them between the top three sides. I then tucked the octopus behind the vellum layer and adhered it with a foam square just behind the head. I had some dimensional heart stickers in my stash that were begging to be used, so I put three of them on each card. My daughter LOVED how girly these were, so I’d say they were a success!
