The new
House Mouse & Friends Monday Challenge is Back to School. A card or other project must feature any of the House Mouse & Friends, Gruffies, or Happy Hoppers, and Anything Goes is the alternate subject.
Maxwell, Monica, Mudpie, and Muzzy are on their way to the first day of school. They don't seem bothered by the deluge, semi-protected as they are by the last of the summer's flowers. Mudpie seems a little hesitant about getting his feet wet, while Monica is happily splashing, Muzzy is soaking his tail, and Maxwell is leaping from rock to rock.
The scene reminds me of my first days at kindergarten. My house was not far from school, so after a couple of days being accompanied by my Grandmother, I was to walk there and back--an adventure in itself--and had a shiny new pair of red rubber boots for rainy days. When the first rainy day came, I set out, joyfully splashing in every puddle I could find. I was later told I was to avoid the puddles, which totally boggled my mind, because I couldn't see the point of boots if one was to avoid puddles.
I remember, too, my two sons' back to school days. I always saw them off reluctantly, because it meant the end of more relaxed time together. They were a joy to be with, not perfect, but full of energy, ideas and thoughts that could surprise and amaze. To keep them entertained during family vacation trips, while my husband did the driving, I made up stories, which the boys haven't forgotten. It's not so much the stories themselves, I'm sure, which stay in their minds, but the feeling of the four of us being woven together by the magic of imagined worlds.
Rainy Days and Back to School, what treasured, bittersweet memories!
The card base is Stampin' Up Lovely Lilac, overlaid with SU Sheer Perfection Vellum. The stamp is House Mouse Rainy Daisy Day. To watercolour, I used various SU watercolour crayons, markers, and ink. I used Judikins Diamond Glaze on the raindrops.
The three cards in this post were all made with House Mouse stamps. From top to bottom: Tweet Treats for All, Gettin' Spooky, and Incognito.
House Mouse stamps never fail to warm my heart and make me smile. Ellen Jareckie, the artist who designs the stamps, has created a little world of critters who are all friends. She has other lines of animal stamps, but the mice are my favourites.
I didn't have the stamp, ink--except the Versamark used on the background--or the sentiment Gina K used on her card, but I enjoyed the challenge of finding substitutes. The flower stamp is a freebie from the British magazine, Craft Stamper, the sentiment is from the SU set, Wonderful Words. I've done Versamark backgrounds, but learned something new in Gina's tutorial; pigment ink can erase the Versamark! I used chalk, since the ink I was going to use, SU Creamy Caramel, is the Craft (pigment) version.
The leaves on the Flying by card were cut from a vellum page, the geese are PSX, the mice are HM, and I Cuttlebugged the strip of cs on the left of the card.
The background for Mudpie and his apple was made by masking and sponging.
The little mice remind me of one of my favourite childhood
comic books, Mary Jane and Sniffles. Sniffles was a mouse, and to become his
size, Mary Jane would say, “Magic words of poof, poof piffles, make me just as
small as Sniffles,” She would shrink to Sniffles’ size and off they’d go on
adventures. 
The other cards are ATCs, made for ATC Artist swaps with the themes, "Cats" and "Mouse House". Being a House Mouse stamps nut, I used those images instead of creating two ATCs of mice houses. The last two ATCs were made to make up for my mistake. I just had to make a story of these last, with one lucky mouse making a friend of a cat, and the other cleverly escaping through the "roof" of his house.
