Welcome friends, It's time once again for the monthly Gentlemen Crafters Design Team Blog Hop. The Gentlemen Crafters Design Team (#TGCDT) are a group of male crafters & Independent Stampin’ Up! Demonstrators from around the world, that love to share our creative side with you on the 2nd Friday of each month. Be sure to visit all the presenters in this month's hop - links can be found at the bottom of this post. 

There are so many fun new products in the January-June Mini Catalogue, it is hard to choose just one to create with, but I always find the the Gentlemen Crafters project is always a time for me to just "play" and see what I end up creating.  So I chose the happy little hedgehog stamp set this time.  So far I've created about 10 fun and very different projects with it, but since we only show one in this hop, I chose one I know you could all easily re-create too.  I will include my other cards in a future blog post to show the versatility of this great bundle.

To conserve on paper, I used a lot of smaller strips in my layering, rather than totally covering up larger pieces to just show their edges.  I like the look of several contrasting colours to accentuate edges, and the softness that the blender brushes add to the background of a piece of white cardstock is great.

I stamped all my images with Sahara Sand ink instead of black so I didn't have stark black edges on the images, and then I coloured them with the Stampin' Blends.  The end result is softer, but I did have to take a black pen and draw in the nose, eye and mouth of the hedgehog, because they were totally lost in the colouring.  A little Granny Apple and Balmy Blue ink applied with a light touch using blender brushes created the grass and clouds in my scene.

Then it was just a matter of layering up all the strips and adding them to the top and bottom edges, and then attaching the image panel with dimensionals in the middle.  The butterflies and branches of the Meadow Moments Embossing Folder used on the Seafoam layer really compliments the scene and adds some texture.  I added Wink of Stella to the mushroom cap and the butterfly for some added sparkle, and a couple Genial Gems for good measure.
   

Measurements & Important Bits

• Card Base: Thick Basic White 11" x 4-1/4" scored at 5-1/2" 
• Pear Pizazz: 2 strips 5-1/2" x 1/2"
• Soft Seafoam: 5-1/2" x 3" embossed with Meadow Moments and cut in two
• Basic White: 5-1/2" x 2-3/4"
• INK:  Sahara Sand, Granny Apple, Balmy Blue
• Stampin' Blends: Ivory, Crumb Cake, Real Red, Mango Melody, Granny Apple
• Embellishments: Wink of Stella, Genial Gems

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Please visit all the other truly talented crafters
in this Blog-hop.  Click a name below:

Barry Selwood & Jay Soriano
Brenton Golley
Bruno Bertucci
Daniel Nickeson
Jason Loucks - off this month
Martin Stone
Rene Guenther