Monday, May 12, 2014

Northern Dance

The Northern lights, or Aurora Borealis is a breathtaking sight. To see the different colored lights dancing in the Northern skies is wondrous. I feel very fortunate to have seen it in all its glory a number of times, but it is so enchanting and different every time, you could never tire of it. I hope I captured the essence of it in my dt project today for Southern Ridge Trading Company. Look, I even incorporated some shadow into my pic ...
I have seen this sponging technique a few times and really wanted to try it with something other than trees and the wilderness. So decided to use this city cape chipboard piece, Misc-305 on this artist trading card. I used the middle sized piece, there is three in the pack.

The order of colors for sponging the northern lights sky is yellow, green, turquoise, purple, dark blue and black. Thank you to Melissa Banbury for demoing this technique, I really enjoyed doing it. The chipboard is painted with black gesso. The stars are done with my white gel pen.

Hope you like it, thanks for visiting :) and feel free to leave a comment.
I hope you see / experience something wondrous today.
Nikki x

Monday, May 5, 2014

SDC145 Flowers Challenge

Valerie set a flower challenge over on the Stampotique Designers Blog .... What fun, thought I'd play :)
Rather than a bouquet of flowers, in a suitable size, Twinkie has an over sized plant pot filled with blooms and insects ..... I just loved the crazy paving ... isn't it great :) The 'for you' sentiment means I can use this card for just about any occasion ... when an over sized fun flower pot is required. hahaha

Here is a close up of Twinkie and the pot. You will see he required a little arm surgery to help him carry his large load. Anyone remember the cartoon Inspector Gadget ? Twinkie has Go-Go gadget arms .... lol
This pot actually has a surprise in store though, its interactive :
You can pull up the flowers to reveal a nice stamped image "Butterflies are self propelled flowers".

I made this card by first using a stencil and distress stain for the crazy paving. Used various patterned papers for the background with a thin layer of gesso over top to meld the colors together. Twinkie is stamped in Momento ink, colored with copics and fussy cut. The flower pot is hand cut with coredinations cardstock and sanded. All of the flowers were cut from my stash of flower punches - some of them havent been out of their box for years ... they were excited to be called upon. The background is more mellow, I wanted the flowers to be the first thing you see. In real life they are all shiny, my wink of stellar pen is wonderful.

Hope you like it ....
Thanks for the visit and please leave a comment :)