You Are Otterly Amazing handmade card tutorial

Hello everyone! Sasha here, and today, I’m sharing a clean and simple card I created using the adorable Animal Pals: Otters Digital Stamp Set! I went for a water-themed card for today’s project using an ink-smushing technique, and I can’t wait to share with you how I created this card!

Whenever I am working with digital stamps, I always like to start my projects by planning them out in Cricut Design Space. To do this, I uploaded the image(s) I wanted to use and rearranged the shapes and images to help give me an idea as to how I wanted my card to be laid out. I planned out my design for a US A2-sized card with a 2” by 5.5” strip going across the card for the water accent. It is at this point that I also choose a sentiment to go with the image(s) I will be using. I chose “You are Otterly Amazing!” for this card, as who doesn’t love a good pun?!

Once I had my card planned out, I printed out my image and coloured it using the following Ohuhu Alcohol Markers:

Otter: E430, E130, E310, E260, E240

Shell: YR190, YR090, YR070, YR030

After colouring, I also used my Prismacolor Premier Coloured Pencils to add some additional shading and texture to the otter.

Now that the image is coloured, we can create the water accent by playing around with ink-smushing! To do this, I simply placed some different shades of blue ink onto my work surface and sprayed the ink lightly with some water in a spray bottle. The inks I used for this are Salty Ocean Distress Oxide, Broken China Distress Oxide, and Royal Pawsitively Saturated Ink from Simon Says Stamp.

Once I was happy with this accent, I splattered it with white paint and used a heat gun to quickly dry it.

To finish off the card, I used liquid adhesive to adhere the strip of cardstock, the sentiment, and the otter image to the card.

Lately, I have been loving creating backgrounds and accents using some mixed media and ink-smushing. It’s a lot of fun to play around with and the results are always different yet amazing each time!