Archival Ink Card Starting with a Gel Print

This card was made for the girlfriend of one of my sons.  She is a cat lover so one of my favourite stamp sets sprang immediately to mind.  Although I started with my gel plate, I decided to use Archival inks for everything on the card.

I worked on a piece of 7" x 7" stencil card and used my 6" x 6" gel press plate mounted on a Clarity mega mount. I also cut a piece of stencil card to 3.5" x 3.5" to use as a mask.  To start, I added Sepia archival ink to the plate and used a Speedball brayer to spread out the ink.  I laid the smaller piece of stencil card in the centre of the larger piece and pressed the gel plate face down onto the two pieces of card.

The smaller piece of card stuck to the gel plate and I left it in place for the next step.  I added Potting Soil archival ink around the card and smoothed it out with the brayer.  I then laid the 7" x 7" Brick Wall stencil  over the first print, lined up the gel plate and took a second print over the first.

Finally, I removed the smaller card from the gel plate and took a final print on a separate piece of stencil card.  This was the print that I worked with.

Using Ground Espresso Distress Archival ink, I stamped the Birdhouse from the Birdhouse Garden stamp set into the aperture.

Next I added one of the birds from the same set in the same ink.

I changed to Potting Soil Archival ink and added some foliage from the same stamp set.  I masked off the outer edge of the aperture first and used both first and second generation stamping.

For the remaining stamping I swapped to Black Soot Distress Archival ink. I started by adding the cat from the same stamp set as before.

I then added Happy (Mini word chains 1&2) and Birthday (Mini word chains 3&4) at the top in the same ink.

Having trimmed back the piece, I matted it onto black card.

I used a Posca pen to add a line around the edge of the aperture.

Can you spot what else I added before I stuck the piece on a 7" x 7" white card blank?