Belted Kingfisher

Belted Kingfisher

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Jubilant

Hello all.  Today I can actually say 'winter' has landed.  After having mid 7C (40F) yesterday we went down to -4C feels like -11C(25F feels like 10F), with it first starting out with rain until the temps fell to below 0C and then the winds and snow blew in, complete whiteouts at times.  As I'm writing this, the snow has stopped but the strong winds are still there.  I just looked out to my backyard and I just counted 28 cardinals both male and female combined eating on the ground and feeders, along with sparrows, house finches, blue jays and juncos. Very picturesque with the male cardinals red bodies against the white snow.

I managed to  snap this photo of Mr. C (as I call him) from my craft room.  Not the greatest because of the window/screen, and also because of the wind it is a bit blury.




I'm still struggling with my 'mojo' but I did manage to colour up a couple of images and I just finished putting one together.

I decided to do some distress watercolouring.  I don't do this technique very often, so thought I would give this a try.  The image I'm using has some open spaces to colour, so room to move the ink around.

I am using Penny Black's - Jubilant.


I didn't keep track of the distress markers I used for this.  I stamped the image in black archival ink and then coloured small areas with the markers and used my koi paint brush to paint.  Once the image was painted I dried it with my heat tool to speed things up and then did the background.  There was some bleeding of other colours, so not perfect, but hey it's water colouring right?

I cut the image out using an oval spellbinder die and let one of the buts, leaf tip and branch extend beyond the die.  There are many ways to do this, the way I do it is lay my die over my image until I'm certain where I want to cut, then make light pencil marks on the inside of the die edge where I need to cut my image where it extends outside the oval.  I then cut the image part I need to up to the pencil markings, lay my die onto my image and life the cut part over top of the die - this way it will not cut.

I then layered the image onto a piece of white card stock cut using spellbinders elegant ovals.
Designer paper used is from Kaisercraft - Kaleidoscope.  For the bottom edge of the green paper I used spellbinders scalloped border two.  I wanted to add a sentiment of some sort, so pulled out my little tags from spellbinders back to basic tags.  The sentiment is from Penny Black -snippets.
To stamp the sentiment I used my MISTI.  Since the sentiment is one line, I first stamped the 'just',
cleaned the stamp and then aligned the 'for you' onto the white card stock under 'just' then closed my MISTI and stamped.  I didn't get a very good impression, so I re-inked 'for you' and stamped again. Thank goodness for the MISTI other wise I would never be able to re-align it again so perfectly.

To finish off I added a tiny bow (thanks to my bow easy) distress clear glitter and clear sequins.

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a wonderful day.

Pauline


6 comments:

Shirley T. said...

Hi Pauline,

Beautiful card - love it. The weather here has been so wet, its rained every day this year!!! Oh well it will soon be Spring.

Much love,

Shirley T. xxx

Leslie said...

Beautiful Pauline. I struggle so much cutting outside of a nestie, I'll have to give it another try following your instructions.

Tracy said...

Gorgeous image! I haven't painted with my Distress inks in a long time. The mix you used is very pretty. I've got one of the mini Misti' s on order. We're suppose to go down to 31F tonight so I'm afraid I can't send you some warmth. :-( Hugs!

Leslie Miller said...

Oh, my gosh, so pretty! Love this gorgeous image. Hello, mojo! Your watercoloring is beautiful. I haven't tried it with distress inks and always wondered what's different. I've heard they move nicely on the paper. Still stuck with tons of SU! reinkers and Tombow markers, so I'm using those on the rare occasion I watercolor anymore. Need to get back to that, I think. Your out of the box die cutting looks fabulous! It makes a person wonder "how'd she do that?", The method you used is the only one I know and easier than I would have thought. Love the way you colored the butterfly, too. I'm just so happy to see this beautiful card today! Really enjoyed your cardinal picture, too. We don't have them here. We do have big, colorful blue jays. They look exactly like cardinals, only blue. Stay cozy, Pauline!

NancyT said...

Oh Pauline. Your card is gorgeous. It's perfect in every way. You sure know how to colour and design layouts. The bud outside the oval die looks fantastic. I believe you have your mojo back. Thanks for sharing instructions on cutting the bud. Wish you could send some of those cardinals to my yard.

CherylQuilts said...

Oh, Pauline, I so love cardinals and love the fellas with their deep red colors! Wow, you really are having winter now! Keep warm, and enjoy your time in your craft room. I love your card and your watercoloring, and I also love the out-of-the-box technique. It's stunning, Pauline, and I see mojo here, girl! Hugs!