Love Is In The Air at The Paper Funday

     I am pleased to say that I have joined the lovely DT at The Paper Funday and this is for their new challenge this month, it's anything goes with an optional twist, the twist this month is 'Love Is In The Air'. 

     

     Cute is not something you'll see here very often but I just love this Stampendous image.

     The hedgehogs were stamped in brown ink onto white card, then with the remaining ink on the stamp I made another image on masking sheet and cut it out. I didn't mask the balloons as they were going to be covered.

      Once the image was masked I used a blending brush and coloured the card with Distress Oxide Victorian Velvet, leaving the area around the hogs  paler than the outside edges.

      

     Using Distress Ink in the same Velvet colour I stamped script across the card.

      The mask was removed from the image and I coloured the hedgehogs with watercolour pencils.

      The balloons were stamped on to a piece of pearl card from Stix2, Misty Rose, it's a perfect match for the Distress Inks. These balloons were cut out and shaped slightly with a ball tool before having pink and white twine added to them.

     The balloons were then stuck on foam pads and put over the original image.

     To get the hogs to hold the balloons I stamped them again and cut out their hands and feet, coloured them to match the original image and mounted them on foam pads, making sure to catch the twine under the hands.

     I chose to mat the image panel with a Bronze pearl card, also from Stix2, because it matched the colours used for hogs spines.

     The whole panel was finally mounted on a white 7x5 card blank. There is no greeting on the outside because I felt there were enough words in the script, it will probably be used as an anniversary card.

     The Paper Funday is an anything goes challenge with an optional twist, so please come and join us with your creations, just remember they MUST be made with paper/card.

I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:

Creations In Pink - #30 Anything Goes In Pink

International Art & Soul - #101 Hearts

Send A Smile 4 Kids - Valentine/Love

Shopping Our Stash - Love Is In The Air

Try It On Tuesday - Falling In Love

Shades of Grey

      This weeks tag challenge from Albright of Diss is monochrome greyscale, monochrome is shades of one colour so it could be blues or greens, etc. this one has to be black, white and greys only.

      It took a while to decide what to make, then I remembered an old Woodware stamp of a flower that looks like it's been zentangled.
      I stamped in Versafine black on to a white tag, then covered that flower with Stix2 masking sheet. The amazing part about this is the last time I remember using the mask with this stamp was July of 2017, the mask was stored on the back of the laminated stamp packaging, it still worked! It took a little time to gently peel it off the packaging but it was perfectly alright to use, now that has to be value for money when it lasts that long, thank you Stix2.

      I stamped the second flower and covered that with another stored mask, then I stamped a few separate leaves to fill in some of the blank spaces.
      With all masks removed I had to decide the best way to colour this. It is recommended that you stamp in Memento when using alcohol markers, oops, I had used Versafine. I left the tag to dry thoroughly and then started with my markers, it didn't run, phew! I have a full set of Graph It pens so I chose the Natural Grey set numbers 0-7, there are numbers 8 & 9 but they're very dark and as this was stamped in black I thought it would be dark enough without them.
      My colouring is pretty basic, I am not very confident with these pens but I have tried to get some shading in there and as I'm bashing my stash then I at least have to try. The small background areas have been coloured with the palest grey so that any white areas on the flowers stand out more.
      I know it's meant to be shades of grey only but I had to sneak a tiny hint of silver in there to lift it a little, this I did with a Stix2 2in1 glue pen and some cold foil. The ribbons are both organza, one silver and the other coloured black with another alcohol pen. It actually looks better than I had hoped, imagine putting that on a red card blank for a striking greeting card.

I would like to enter this in the following challenges:

Crafty Gals Corner - Flowers

Lemon Shortbread - Anything Goes

International Art & Soul - No Focal Image

The Artistic Stamper - In The Garden