Happy Saturday everyone! I am back with a new video tutorial to share with you that features a cool background technique where I combine a Gel Press printing plate with Distress Inks.

This video and post are also part of Justine Hovey’s 1 Million Views Celebration Hop! Justine is a good friend of mine who I used to be Design Team members with on the Create a Smile video team. Justine has a great knack for creating clean and simple cards and intertwining a fun technique into the design. I highly encourage you to check out both her blog and YouTube channel!

The most recent card kit from Simon Says Stamp (Wild and Colorful), included some really fun products that I really wanted to use. I used the images from the Wild Cuddly Critters stamp set on these cards and paired them with images from the Cuddly Critter Accessories stamp set.

Cuddly Critter Accessories is a set that was released last year and matches the original Cuddly Critters set. I was very excited to see that they also matched perfectly with the Wild Cuddly Critters stamps too. This allowed me to turn these adorable animals into PARTY animals, which goes well with Justine’s celebration hop theme!

I stamped and watercolored the images with Zig Clean Color markers from the 60 set of brush markers. I used only one marker for shading each color and simply used multiple layers of that color to add depth.

For the sentiments, I paired two different stamp sets together to make a custom greeting. I think its fun to be able to stretch my stamps this way. On these cards, I paired the “wild thing” greeting from Wild Cuddly Critters with a happy birthday message from You Matter. Voila! Birthday cards with a wild animal twist!

To step the sentiments up a notch, I heat embossed them with white embossing powder and colored in the “wild thing” part of the sentiment with Zig Markers. The happy birthday part of the sentiment was heat embossed onto cardstock strips that coordinated with other colors in each card.

One of my favorite aspects of these cards are the eyes. They are dimensional and add some really cool interest to the critters. I’ve done this technique in the past, but usually I use Glossy Accents and add white details. This twist instead uses Enamel Accents over the eyes and I used a Sharpie pen to add black details instead of white. The effect is really awesome, don’t you think?

On all of the cards, I layered brown cardstock under the Gel Press/Distress Ink panels. I also used either a patterned-paper-covered card base or made my own pattern with a background stamp. For a final finishing detail, I added Spectrum Noir clear glitter to the balloons on all of the cards.

I hope you will be checking out the video to see the Gel Press and Distress Ink technique in action!

Also be sure to check out the blog hop that this video is a part of! There are lots of prizes to be won, which you won’t want to miss.

Because this is a video hop, you will need to do all the hopping on YouTube. In the description box of my video, you’ll find the link to Michelle Short’s video and a link to Justine’s blog where you’ll find all the details you need to know!