Zoo Review for The Paper Players

Happy Sunday, peeps! After nearly a week home sick from work, I am feeling much better--not 100%--but getting there.  I was glad to have the excuse of my Sunday card for The Paper Players to push my brain to start working again.  It felt good to create!  This week, Jaydee is our hostess-with-the-mostest with a theme that Sandy picked out:

Love it!  There are all different ways to go with this challenge--think of all the different kinds of wildlife--and you'll see the rest of the Design Team has tons of inspiring ideas.  I couldn't get my mind off of using my as-yet-uninked Zoo Review set for today's card:

I love giraffes.  Twiga--Swahili for giraffe--are one of my top 5 favorite animals.  On recent trips to South Africa and Tanzania we were treated to many sightings of these graceful creatures and I never tired of watching them.  They always seem so gentle but in Tanzania we watched two young males literally smacking heads together.  Quite a sight to see them whack those nubby horns into each other.  Anywhooooo, on to the card!  I had help from a few other challenges with the details of this card.  The color combination of Old Olive, Crushed Curry, Cajun Craze, Very Vanilla and Early Espresso over at Fab Friday (FabFri30) is perfect and I adored The Friday Mashup challenge (FM134) to use their sketch and chevrons--what a cool sketch!

I knew I wanted to heat emboss the Zoo Review giraffe in Early Espresso so I started with that and built the rest of the elements around it!  I colored her spots with a Crushed Curry stampin' write marker and stamped some companions in Sahara Sand.  (I hope the Fab Friday team doesn't mind an extra neutral!)  It's so easy to color an embossed image.  The raised edges of the embossing really help you stay inside the lines. 

The left side of the focal piece needed a little something so I inked just the grass with an Early Espresso stampin' write marker and stamped it a couple more times across the bottom.  I used EE because the first image was embossed in EE and I wanted it to look continuous.  Lastly, I used a Blender Pen and Old Olive ink pad to shade the grassy savannah for the giraffes to stand on.  I love the sanded look of Core'dinations cardstock and the Woodgrain embossing folder.  Combined with the Linen Thread, it adds the perfect a rustic touch to my trio of Twiga!  For the chevron shaped border of my cardstock and DSP, I found the center point along the bottom, drew a dot about 1/2" up, and drew lines with a ruler from the dot to the bottom corner of the paper.  Then just cut along the lines with my paper snips to achieve the chevron shaped edge.  Easy-peasy!

The Paper Players Design Team

Ann Schach

Anne Marie Hile

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis

Head on over to The Paper Players to check out all the inspiration from the rest of the Design Team.  Then come on back to join us before the challenge closes on Friday, November 8th at Noon (PDT).  Here are the challenges I used for today's card:

Lastly, I can't leave without sharing one of my favorite photos from South Africa with you....have a great day, friends!

 
Supplies
Stamps: Zoo Review, Wetlands
Ink: Versamark, Old Olive, Early Espresso, Sahara Sand
Paper: Very Vanilla, Early Espresso, Early Espresso Core'dinations CS; Sweater Weather DSP; retired DSP from my stash (old olive & cajun craze)
Extras: Early Espresso embossing powder; Linen Thread; Regals Candy Dots; Woodgrain embossing folder; Sanding block; Blender Pen; Crushed Curry & Early Espresso stampin' write markers