A Winter Cardinal

Happy weekend & welcome! It's always such a mood lifter when Saturday rolls around. Today's card has been in the works for a bit, as I was thinking about backgrounds. I had seen Jennifer McGuire do a stencil technique*, and immediately thought 'that's it'. Hope this link will take you to the video and the inspirational technique was about 1/3 into the video.

- A Winter Cardinal stamp set - Sparkle N Sprinkle. Saw this set at Christmas, rather by accident, as it really was not ready for release just then. Miss Margaret (the owner) very kindly let me buy a set because she could see my disappointment. I waited until the March release to post a card featuring this set. 

Stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black - colored with Copic R family. I don't keep track of  markers used. I start with a light basecoat, then just lay down colors until I get a shading that I like. (I test the colors on a scrap of same type of c/s used for stamping the image). Not very organized, I admit, but that's how I work. Also study the finished image, and usually return to do some more shading, as my eye just doesn't seem to like shadows! But shadows & highlights make the flat image come to life. The branch was colored with Earthtones, and the greenery - with various greens.

- Sizzix Framelits die 658793, which has a nice stitched look. Traced the outer edge to get a scant mat. This was colored with a dark red copic; used a versamark pen over it, then sprinkled SnS Oriental Fire EP, heat embossed. It doesn't show well in the photo, but IRL it looks quite nice with the thin sparkly edge peeking out. The focal image was placed on dimensional foam dots.

- *Background: Adhered double side adhesive paper (Sookwang) to the top fold card base - top half only. Prepared the Hero Arts Tweed Pattern stencil by rubbing versamark pad over the side that would be against the sticky paper. (as Jennifer says, it helps with the removal of the stencil later). Stencil pressed down firmly. Poured generous amount of blue microfine glitter over the open areas of the stencil. Removed excess by shaking and gently brushing. Used the sticky paper backing to press firmly against the glittered surface & stencil. Once this color was adhered well, lifted the stencil; used a Pewter microfine glitter over the remaining open areas of the sticky paper stencil pattern. Removed excess, and then burnished, burnished with fingers. Once I saw how nice it looked, I wished I had done entire background rather than just the top half. Added a pearlized silver paper that was embossed with a SU snowflake EF as the bottom dp. Didn't want the 'join' to be obvious so -

die cut M.Box Pinecone Corner(98685) with white snippet, colored with copics. Cut apart to fit where it was needed to camouflage the join. Added a touch of Twinkling Clouds to create the snow, the sentiment from the set stamped in SU Real Red, punched with an SU oval. Two rhinestones for some bling...Voila ...there's my cardinal. Don't you just love  this beautiful bird? Hope you like this one!

Will be linking to the SnS March Challenge here. Thanks for joining me today, and hope that whatever you've planned will be happy. Hugs!