Summer Garden Friend

Many thanks to all of you who left comments on my Praying Mantis card post, and shared your stories about these groovy little creatures.

The day after I published that post, the praying mantis featured in it moved on to bigger things; I haven't seen it, but I'm pretty sure it had outgrown the pot it was living in. I know enough about them to know that once they can fly they often move on, but I did find myself missing the ritual of finding it amongst the leaves. Happily, a new little guy showed up on the other side on the porch. It's still pretty tiny, and I hope it sticks around long enough for me to watch it molt, because that's cool.

Can you see it?

I was pleasantly surprised to find a praying mantis stamp in my stash; I've owned these wood-mount stamps forever, and I was glad to have a chance to use it.

Using a green stamp marker, I stamped the Praying Mantis directly onto the Core'Dinations cardstock base, and filled it in with a colored pencil.

The design was inspired by CAS(E) this Sketch #38 (right). I glued on the lengths of fabric leaf trim with ZipDry.

The "hello" sentiment is made with green plastic Marquee Letters from The Paper Studio. I adhered them with Glossy Accents.

After notching the top corners with a Marvy punch, I mounted the decorated piece onto a a piece of the same green cardstock, but with the shiny side up. The card base itself is Kraft paper.

Inspiration/Challenges:
CAS(E) this Sketch: Sketch #38
Craft Your Passion: 3D
Dynamic Duos #63: Garden Green & Pear Pizzazz
Lady Anne's Challenge: Monochrome

Thank you for visiting,

I see you! Praying Mantis shaped card

I was very pleased to see that we have a Praying Mantis in our garden again this year. They're really fascinating creatures, and I've had fun watching it molt and grow this past week.

It went for a little walk today, possibly because some noisy meat-creature kept taking photos of it!

Anyhoo, I was inspired to make this simple shaped card:

I was also inspired by this week's Shaped/One Layer card challenge at Less Is More, so everything is stamped & heat-embossed directly onto the card base, which I cut on my Cricut with the Campin' Critters cartridge (I cut the "sign" card at 3 inches from <bird1>).

I want to make a brown version, but since the color of a praying mantis has everything to do with camouflage, I can just wait for my little friend to change!

Inspiration/Challenges:
Less Is More Week 128: One Layer card, not Square or Rectangle
The Stamping Chef: Monochromatic or no coloring

Here's a photo of my dog Walt... can you see the mantis in the foreground?

click images to enlarge

Thank you for visiting,