DV #179 Summer Colours

Our challenge today at Dream Valley is Summer Colours. We are sponsored by Star Stampz.

At the time I was preparing this post it feels like Winter still here in Hampshire and I still have my heating on in early May!!!! Anyhow, hopefully by the time this is published it will be feeling at least like Spring.

EDIT; Spring has finally sprung!!! Thank goodness.

As soon as I saw this image I imagined her floating away over a rainbow, and I had just the perfect die to match my thoughts. I diecut the colours of the rainbow with Sue Wilson’s You are my Sunshine rainbow die and the Sun is also from Sue’s Rain or Shine, part of the same Necessities collection. The clouds are from Memory Box. The sentiment I printed myself and the background paper is from Wild Rose Studio from their Blackberry Lane pad.

The image was coloured with a combination of Copics for the hair and skin and Zig Clean Colour Brush pens. Unfortunately I went over the balloons with some varnish in a pen and it bled the colour of the orange balloon onto the tip of the green one! I guess because the colours are water based it shifted. And after all that there isn’t even any ‘wet look/shine’ from the varnish which is what I was trying to achieve!

I am entering this into:-

A Perfect Time to Craft - #5 Anything Goes
Crafting With Friends - #67 Anything Goes
Crafts Galore Encore - May: Anything Goes
Crafty Hazelnut’s Patterned Paper - May. Anything goes with Patterned Paper
Creative Craft Cottage - #107 Dies and/or Punches
Fab ‘n Funky - #393 Garden Or Outdoors
Happy Little Stamper - May: Anything Goes With Dies
Jo’s Scrap Shack - #233 Anything Goes
Love to Craft - #22 May: Anything Goes
Pause, Dream, Enjoy - #19 Anything Goes
Tic, Tac, Toe - #46 Centre Line - Scene, Red, Something Digital

CCM #211 No Patterned Paper

Our challenge today at Crafty Cardmakers is No Patterned Paper. Please stop by the team’s blogs and leave them some love.

I started with a blank A3 white card which I created an approx A5 landscape card blank from. I stencilled onto that from an Imagination Crafts A4 stencil called Distressed Letter using Wilted Violet, Shaded Lilac, Broken China and Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxides. The blue/green frame is an Intricutz die, cut out of mirri card.

The feathers were a lot of fun to create. They are from Chocolate Baroque from their I shall Be Your Wings stamp sheet. There are several different styles and sizes of feathers and these two are sort of zentangled. I wanted to use the Colourcraft Soft Relief paste to make some textural feathers, but I wanted them to be multicoloured instead of the plain pearl of the paste, so before applying the paste I spritzed each stamp with water and then added some pixie powders. At this stage the stamps were very wet and I wasn’t sure that the paste would ever dry applying it to wet stamps so I mopped a little of the coloured water up with kitchen roll. In hindsight it might have been better to have made a paint from the powders and applied that as it would not have been so wet I think.

Anyhow I then added the paste with a palette knife, spread reasonably thinly and left to dry. Because it’s so hot at the moment it was dry in about 12 hours, but I’m guessing it would normally take closer to 48 hours. At that stage you bend the stamp a little and peel off the set paste and this is what I got.

As you can see, at this stage they were very pale and there were some areas where there was no colour at all. Whilst the paste was drying a lot of the colour leeched right through to the reverse side, the non patterned side of the paste feathers. So as I had wanted them to be much brighter I used my versamark pen and instead added some Cosmic Shimmer sparkle pigments in similar shades to the Pixie Powders I used to start with.

This is what they looked like after - I forgot to take a pic until they were on the card!

As you can see, they were now much, much brighter, much more what I was after.

The final part of the card is a sentiment, ‘A Heart Without Dreams is like a Bird without feathers’ from the same stamp sheet which I stamped with Kaleidacolor Riviera inkpad.

The feathers and sentiment were backed with foam tape to give them a little height.

I am entering this into:-

A Inky Mess - #20 Anything Mixed Media Goes
Artistic Inspirations - #199 Anything Goes
Calling All Sistahs - #12 Encouragement Card
Classic Design Team - #25 Open Challenge
Creatalicious Challenges - #138 Anything Goes, Option Add a Sentiment
Create and Inspire - #73 Anything Goes, Option use a stencil
Creative Artiste - #38 Anything Mixed Media Goes
Heartful Stamping - #38 Anything Goes + a Stamp
Just For Fun Rubber Stamps - May: Use More Than One Stamp
Polkadoodles - #18 Anything Goes
Quick Quotes - #87 Add A 3D element (feathers are VERY dimensional)
Stamping Sensations - May: Close to Nature
Stamps & Stencils - Let’s Fake It (clearly my feathers are not real!)
Use Your Stuff - #310 Mood Board (Bottom Left bird, or rather his feathers!)
We Love 2 Create - #8 Anything Creative/Mixed Media Goes