Oh, Hoppy Day!!!

I am so addicted to these cupcake challenges lately! Here is the sketch Taylor dreamed up for this week. When I first saw it, I was totally overwhelmed. I love me some circles, but NINE? What in the world do you do with nine? I promptly decided I'd be skipping this week's challenge (lol!), but the more I thought about it, the more I started to develop a little idea of how to make it work.


And here you have it, my Frolicking Frogs!

The lily pads are circles punched out of Green Galore, with a notch cut into each one (freehand). Then I doodled a ring around the edge with my Green Galore marker, using the same line-dot pattern that the frog images are drawn with. The frogs are all part of one long border stamp that comes with the set. There are three different frogs on that stamp, so I had to use one of them twice. I did some paper piercing on all of the white space rather than coloring it, and added a prima to one lily pad for some dimension and a splash of color. Doesn't it make that lily pad look a little like Ms. PacMan though? lol.

Here are some close ups of my frogs:

As you can see in the photos, I added stickles to the waves to give it a little sparkle.

The background is dry embossed with a Cuttlebug folder. It was a bit of a trick because I had to run the paper through twice without getting too much of a "seam" in the middle (the square card measures 5 3/8" square, bigger than the embossing folder), but the line is covered well by all the circles.

So, tell me! What do you think?

Details:
Stamps: Frolicking Frogs (Stampin' Up!)
Ink: Adirondak Pitch Black
Paper: Taken With Teal, Green Galore, Whisper White, Gable Green
Other: Copic Markers, Stickles, Prima Flower, Yellow Brad, 1 1/4" Circle Punch (SU!), 1 1/2" Circle Punch (SU!), Cuttlebug Embossing Folder, Green Galore Marker (SU!)