Party Animals in Disguise

In addition to stamp surgery that I mentioned here, masking is another great way to get more mileage of your stamps.

Let's take a look at this card:

and compare it with this one:

Could you tell which animal appears in both cards?  Well, I'm sure you can but I'm hoping that my soon-to-be three year old niece can too!  Her birthday is just a few days from Halloween, so I'd like to send her two cards at the same time, and hopefully she will notice the similarity of the animals.

I've used the Lawn Fawn Party Animals stamps and dies for the birthday card but for the halloween card, I used masking to cover up the top part of the animals' heads then stamped their respective hats.  When the mask is removed, voila, it looks like the hats and the animals belong to the same stamp.  I fussy cut out these Halloween animals with their hats and to be honest, I kept thinking whether I would do the same if I had the dies.  Would I just stick the hat on the animal's head, or would I still do masking and fussy cutting?

Dies make cutting small images a lot easier but for such occasion, where I'd like to see if my niece could tell which is which, I would still use masking and fussy cutting.  Otherwise it may be too easy for her, right?  I can't wait to see her face when she receives these cards!

My Halloween card is entering the following challenges:
Get Creative - Halloween colors
Dream valley - Halloween
Eureka Stamps Challenge - Halloween
Our Crafty Corner - Get ready for Halloween

Thanks for stopping by!