Art With Heart “Heart of Christmas 2019” - Week 15

Light & Peace with Colouring Techniques

Hello, welcome to Week 15 of the Art with Heart Team's Christmas Blog Hop. Only 4 weeks till Christmas - so hard to believe - how the weeks are just flying by.

So glad you have dropped in to Valley Inspirations with Andrea as you hop along and check out the gorgeous Christmas projects by my fellow blog hoppers.

This week has been hectic as I tried to catch up after my recent holiday in the West.  It also included my card class on Monday morning where we focused on creating Christmas cards and tags.  Given my busy week, the Christmas card I am sharing with you tonight is pretty simple. I've used two different and easy colouring techniques to focus on the delightful angel from Stampin' Ups Light and Peace stamp set.

I heat embossed this sweet, gentle angel using Stampin' Up's Shimmer White emboss powder on to Vellum cardstock. (Stampin' Up's Vellum copes really well with heat embossing and doesn't wrinkle with the heat.) The angel was coloured using Blends - Stampin' Up's wonderful alcohol markers. I used Ivory with touches of Bronze to lightly colour her skin, Light & Dark Crumb Cake and Light Soft Suede for her hair, Light & Dark Smoky Slate on her wings, Light & Dark Seaside Spray with touches of Light Night of Navy and Light Pretty Peacock on her flowing robes; colouring on the other side of the vellum, which softened the colours. Vellum was chosen to give the angel more of an etherial mood. The card front directly beneath the vellum was Whisper White coloured with a sponge roller using both Seaside Spray and Pacific Point ink pads. The Vellum has been cut a tad smaller than the graded coloured cardstock, which shows an edging of the colour blending. The colouring is darker at the top and the bottom blending to a light tinge in the middle. This was mounted on Night of Navy cardstock which was in turn mounted onto a card base of Balmy Blue. I find colour interplay fascinating and love experimenting. Blending Seaside Spray with Pacific Point altered the effect of the individual colours which meant that Balmy Blue cardstock provided a better colour combination as the card base.

After mounting the various pieces together, I decided something else was needed and was about to reach for my So Many Stars Bundle when I remembered a friend had borrowed it. Hmm, so what could I do? I noticed some of the Star Designer elements on my work table - but they were copper, which would not blend well with this card. Not to be deterred, I pushed one of the stars gently into a Versamark ink pad and sprinkled some Shimmer White emboss powder over and heat embossed it. To finish the card I heat embossed the sentiment onto Balmy Blue pre-coloured vellum.

The centre of the card used another of the sentiments from the stamp set, which was stamped in Night of Navy. To tie the card centre with the card front the sponge roller was used to gently colour the top and bottom of the Whisper White centre.

The photos don't show the shimmer and colouring effects well - it can be difficult for a camera to pick up some of these nuances, which certainly add to the overall effect of the card. While recognising this, I still feel something is missing or could be executed differently. I'd love to hear any thoughts you may have of how the card could be improved. I would really appreciate you taking the time to add a comment below. After reviewing all your ideas, I will remake the card and add it to this post.

That's it for me for this week's blog hop, however, there is so much more inspiration to be found. The lovely Michele Taylor is hosting the Heart of Christmas 2019 blog hop this week – to check out the team’s festive creations you can visit Michele’s page, Taylor Made Designs by clicking here where she has links to all this week's blog hoppers.

Thanks for dropping by and taking time to check out my blog. Hope to see you next week. 💕🐾