Well, I didn't get this done in time to put in the gallery at the Jingle Belles blog but I wanted to share it anyway. As you might be able to gather from the title we're using something that we got for Christmas. I knew exactly what I wanted to use. My friend Sabrina sent me this wonderful Christmas stamp from Impression Obsession and I just love the way this turned out.
Here's a close-up and I apologize that it looks so washed out here but I haven't reassembled my photo tent yet. My dining room table still has Christmas decorations on it waiting to be stashed away.
Before I made the card I stamped the image on a scrap of Whisper White card stock and started trying out colors and methods to color it. As you can see, I tried both a grey sky and a blue and opted for the blue. I also tried full strength red marker on the peppermint stick on the right and watercoloring the one on the left. The left one won! Then there were some color combinations in the hanging ornaments that left something to be desired. I had tried using pearl shimmer paint for the snow and decided against that because it was just too silver when it picked up the light. In the finished card I used diamond dust instead and now I've just realized that I meant to silver those ornament caps when I came downstairs - oh well, whoever gets this card will have it corrected.
I have all my notes to myself on the scrap. As I mentioned, I used Whisper White CS for the scrap and I also used it for the card instead of watercolor paper. I was taking a little bit of a risk using an aquapainter on that cardstock because you have to be very careful to not overwork the blending or it will "pill" the paper. Aside from the sky, the areas that were actually watercolored were very small, most of the large areas like the buildings base and trunk were done with markers directly, so this paper worked out well.
Not only did I add Crystal Effects to the icicles, I added it to the front five ornaments also on the finished card to give them some shine. When I showed HWNSNBP this tonight I actually got a "Wow!" from him (I think it was the glitter!).
I think the next time I use this stamp I will cut away the gray area around the bird and give him a little light in there - what do you think?
Thank you Sabrina for this beautiful stamp and the happy challenge of bringing it to life.
Very nice - makes me wish Christmas wasn't behind us.
ReplyDeleteIt deserves the wow, Lorraine. I knew you could make something beautiful with it, in spite of all that fine detail!! Thank you for sharing the work diagram too, I really enjoyed looking at that. I like your idea of cutting away the shaded area round the bird, too.
ReplyDeleteC says to tell you how much he likes the Asian bird card, which is sitting on the bookshelf just beside where he sits.