The Addicted to Stamps and More challenge this week was ‘anything goes’, so I decided to make a set of 3x3s with a stamp set that is new to me, but not new in general. It is called Merry Mice and is from Stampin’ Up!. I believe it was from a catalogue from last year – and I love it.

I stamped the images in Archival Basic Black ink onto shimmery white card stock. I was planning on using my aqua painter to colour them in and the shimmery white card takes water well – a great alternative to water colouring paper. The aqua painter provides a really simple way to have a go at water colouring. Essentially you fill the barrel with water and you can squeeze out as much or as little as you like. The water is all contained in the pen so there is no chance of knocking a cup of water over at your desk. Because I water coloured all the little mice in, I decided to also enter these cards in the Happy Little Stampers November Watercolour Challenge.

I coloured all the mice in an assortment of colours including Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler, Pacific Point, Peekaboo Peach, Sweet Sugarplum and Lemon Lime Twist. I tried not to use too much water on the images – just enough to transfer the colour nicely.

The card bases were made from Cherry Cobbler and Pear Pizzazz and all of the cards had some gold foil used as part of the mat. The gold foil doesn’t photograph well, but it does look pretty in real life. A couple of the sentiments are done on cherry cobbler card and are gold embossed – which again I haven’t photographed well!

For the envelopes, Stampin’ Up! are currently selling 3×3 whisper white envelopes which saves me a lot of time making them.

All that was left was decorating them. I stamped some small stars on the front (the stars are from the same Merry Mice set) and on the back I thought the cheeky mouse on the flap was a quite cute.

I hope you like this afternoon’s project.