Essentials By Ellen April Release - Hot Mess Leading Lady

Hi folks! Hot Mess Lady is here! If you follow me, or others from the Ellen Hutson team, you may have seen some sneak peeks this week of the newest leading lady ... Hot Mess Lady by Brandi Kincaid! Hahaha, you can't help but grin while she's on your stamping block! I can so relate to her, right down to having my hair in a bun while I'm working around the house (or crafting). She is quite versatile!

Aside from being a fun leading lady, she comes with a lot of different accessories, and sentiments. For this card I chose to have her hold the coffee mug because, well, seriously, check out the sentiment on her shirt!!! May your coffee have coffee. Hahaha! I just had to use that one. I do love that there are several different sentiments that are sized to fit the front of her shirt, and think that's such a smart idea. You can either use that space for a secondary sentiment, like I have here, or you can have that be your only sentiment. If you have a pretty full card, design-wise, it's a nice option to put the sentiment on her shirt and not have to find a different space on the card for it.

The circle window gives Hot Mess Lady a place to peek out from, and lets you see the fun gingham pattern from Lawn Fawn on the inside of the card. The main sentiment works well because it has a double meaning here. It can refer to the lady being strong, or the coffee being strong. And the fact that it says "made to be strong" fits even more with coffee. Love the word die from the Be Strong die set.

The next card shows how well Hot Mess Lady can clean up and put herself together:

 

Ta-da! She definitely looks ready to go out of the house now! All it took was a couple snips to give her a hair cut and remove the stray pieces of hair. She is totally transformed. Which is good, because I wanted her pull double duty and be a comic book star.

In her comic panel, she's daydreaming of her favorite food, in all different colors. I drew trios of sprinkles with a pen to fill in some of the white space. The sentiment is actually from a Winnie & Walter set Sentimental: Birthday. Then the secondary sentiment which ties everything together is stamped on her shirt. Donut quit your daydream [of donuts!]

Here are all the pieces. I freehand cut a cloud shape for the thought balloon from white and black cardstock. The starburst is cut freehand as well, and colored with a yellow copic. I decided it needed one more point on the top left so I cut another point and adhered it behind. No one will ever know since the thought balloon covers it up! Instead of cutting a second layer of black cardstock for the starburst I just outlined the edges in black marker.

The nice thing about making a comic-based, or pop-art style, card is that you don't have to spend any time shading. Everything is a flat yellow, red, blue, green, etc. It also makes picking your colors out easy! These colors fit right in with this Jonny Quest comic from the 60s.

Here's a close up of Hot Mess Lady holding the donut. I just have adhesive behind her fingers to attach the donut to the card.

I usually don't have more than one mat on my cards, but this one has a blue panel with a thin black mat on white cardstock. Again, to represent a comic book panel. The inside is lined with red cardstock to further the comic book theme.

I'm pretty sure Hot Mess Lady will be getting a lot of use in my craft room. As you can see she's pretty versatile. Everyday Hero Lady by Brandi Kincaid is the other leading lady being released today. In hindsight, it's kind of funny that I chose Hot Mess Lady for the comic book inspired card, instead of Everyday Hero Lady, since she actually LOOKS like a comic book hero, with a cape and everything. But who wants to take the easy route, right?!

More inspiration awaits in The CLASSroom, where some of my teammates have shared cards they've made with the Essentials by Ellen April release. Best news is that the release is available right now!

Thanks for looking!

-Kelly

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Hot Mess Stamps

Hot Mess Dies

Everyday Hero Stamps

Everyday Hero Dies

Be Strong Die

Be Strong Stamps