To make this card, I used the Stampin’ Up! Catalog for inspiration and I found it on page 46 in the Zany Zoo Suite Collection samples. I didn’t copy it exactly, but it gave me this idea. I’d been wanting to use this pattern in the designer paper ever since I got it!

The card base is Pool Party with a layer, leaving a little wider margin around the edges than usual. The designer paper is the Zoo Crew Designer Series Paper and as you can see I used the black & white little flowers. You can leave them plain or color them in. Of course, I couldn’t resist coloring them with my Stampin’ Blends. It’s not difficult because really all you are doing is dotting the flowers, centers, and leaves with the tips of the markers! Just wait to color the flowers until you get the center piece on the card so you don’t color the center flowers that are just going to be covered up!

Since I had my Radiating Stitches Dies out on the table I decided to use one rectangle to create a frame for the knitting alpaca! I used Lost Lagoon cardstock. If you want the center cut out of the frame, you need to use the smaller die to do that. Then I added a plain Basic White piece underneath the frame.

The alpaca is stamped with the Zany Zoo Stamp Set and diecut with the Zany Zoo Dies. As I looked at the sample in the catalog, I wondered where they got that little table and flower vase. Well, those are little extras in the dies!! And when I say “little” I mean you have never seen anything as little as the flower dies! Put on your reading glasses!! It is fun, however, to have these extra little pieces in the dies to make interesting little scenes! I cut the table out of Early Espresso, the vase out of Gorgeous Grape, and the flower out of Sweet Sorbet. I even cut the flower again out of Granny Apple Green cardstock in order to get the green stem but that is completely unnecessary. Just die cut the flower, cut the flower off the stem, and draw in a tiny, barely there little stem with a marker

The alpaca is colored with one of the Naturals Stampin’ Blends, a light brown. I looked it up….alpacas can be many colors of brown, to save you the research, so you can choose any brown color you like! Or choose a whimsical color like Stampin’ Up! did! The face is colored with Crumb Cake as are her arms and legs and her hooves with Dark Pecan Pie. The chair is colored with Petal Pink and the yarn with Calypso Coral.

The alpaca is popped up with Stampin’ Dimensionals. The little table, vase, and flower are glued down onto the Basic White.

The greeting is in the Zany Zoo Stamp Set and diecut with an oval in the All That Dies set. I needed something small to fit in that space and this oval is perfect. Because the background looked too plain, I just used some of the markers I used on the card to put three little dots in each color randomly in the empty space.

That’s it! If you don’t want to stamp and color the alpaca, find her on one of the designer papers and cut that out instead. But coloring is easy and oh-so good for us!

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