Beautiful in Blue

Hello and Happy Friday! Here's a beautiful blue card featuring the dress stamp from Plate #7. The "Let's Celebrate" sentiment is on Plate #9. Makes me want to go put on a fancy dress and go out. This card would be good for any celebration occasion. I love all the shades of blue working together on the same card.




Materials: Blue Mica card stock, handmade in India papers silver/blue, 2 shades of brads silver/blue, white cardstock, Colorbox Blue Iris chalk ink pad, Versafine black ink pad; Derwent Inktense pencils, blender pen, paper trimmer.

Steps:

1)Stamp the dress from Plate #7 onto the white card stock using a black Versafine ink pad. Set aside and allow this to dry well.
2) Stamp the sentiment from Plate #9 onto white card stock using blue iris chalk ink.
3) Trim the handmade paper to fit onto the blue mica card, leaving approx a 1/4" border all the way around. You can use use tape or glue to adhere the paper down to the cardstock or you can rely on the brads to hold the paper down.
4) Select three complimentary shades of blue watercolor pencils from Derwent--one light, medium, and dark.
5) Once the Versamark ink has completely dried, take the dress image and color in the light shade of blue; then use the medium shade of blue and lightly color the areas you want to shade. In this case, I shaded the waistline and the bottom, and very gently on the edge and dress seams.
6) Starting in the lightest area, use your blender pen to color the watercolor pencil. Allow the image to dry.
7) Now take a very dark color of blue and color ON TOP of the already colored image. Do so very lightly and carefully as you can not get rid of the color once you have added it.
8) Take the blender and very gently blend the darkest color on top of the other colors. If you look at the dress image, you can see that there are three shades of blue showing (esp. if you look at the skirt area).
9) Once the watercoloring is dried, take a watercolor crayon in grey and outline the entire image. Then use your blender pen to color the image. It's hard to see in the photo, but adding this outline to your image really makes it "pop" off the paper. Good colors for outlining are greys and light blues.
10) Mount an additional sheet of dark blue handmade paper on top of the embossed silver paper.
11. Trim the image and the "Let's Celebrate" sentiment to the same width and mount them on top of your card.
Watercoloring your stamped images is a fun artistic way to learn about shades of colors and how to make your images seem more dimensional.
Cheers!
Holley