Christmas Card Club - Berries

Good afternoon on a sunny & warm Sunday. Today's post is for our Christmas Card Club where our Mrs. A had chosen a theme of Berries. Before I get to that, however, I'd like to announce that the blog candy winner, Jenny L. of Cardsarus has contacted me, and her new Schtuff will soon be on the way over the pond to her! Thanks everyone for all your sweet comments & joining in. Wish I could have selected Everyone!

One other caveat and I need to go edit the Woodie post to add this, but I'll say it here as well:

The soda can metal can have sharp edges. It's fun to work with, easy to cut off the top & bottom of the can. (Mr. makes a poke hole into the metal with a utility knife, then cuts off the top & bottom. I cut the metal to size using the Tim Holtz scissors, but any scissors should cut the metal. It's very thin. However would not use the good sewing scissors to do this). You can use dies with this metal too. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have, but there's videos available showing how to do this with the alcohol inks.

As I've stated here before, I'm pretty rubbish with water coloring. I keep trying to get better though, and have tried with different weights & grades of water color paper (hot & cold press). Different mediums. When I saw the theme Berries, I knew there was a great Penny Black image in my stash that would work to try water coloring. (HA!) The image is berry merry Christmas.

I tried different mediums with this image, and will explain for each effort.



1st effort

- (1) inked up with DI pumice  and used Zig Brush markers & would have been ok with this effort, but for the bleeding. Tried wetting the area, blotting, still not great. Sooo....

2nd effort

 

-(2) hunted up the gelatos and inked the stamp, spritzed water, and stamped. This is the 2nd generation stamping, which I started on first, in case I messed up. Which I did! I wanted to outline around the berries with the Zig brush, and try to move that color in towards the center. You can see where I stopped cause it was going nowhere!

 

3rd effort

-(3) this was the first generation effort with the gelatos, and I liked it ok, but again, just not able to move that line of Zig brush color in smoothly as I was trying to do. I kept with it, hoping it would get better, and perhaps this might eventually be usable - for something!

 

TA-DA!

 

4th effort

(4)This time inked with the Tsukineko brush markers, spritzed and stamped. I really liked this look better than any of the others, but still wanted to try for a faint outline at the berry edge, and smooth the darker color into the berry to get some definition of the image. To my eye, this just looked like blobs if you didn't add in some separation. Colored the berries, branch & stems. Trying very hard to not have bleeding. Red is _such_ a hard color to work with  - for me anyway - was my challenge when I was learning to color with copics too. Anyway, I was feeling a bit better about my efforts on _this_ one. Let it dry very well, then came back with the Zigs to add some background color. Instead of trying to lay the color directly from the pen brush onto the image, splashed some of the 2 shades of blue intended for the background, onto an acrylic stamp block. Used the water brush to dilute & combine the colors. Starting from the edges of the berries, laid down the color, and tried to smooth out towards the edges, hoping not to cause bleeding. Slightly wet this area with the brush before beginning, but tried to keep it not so wet up close to the image to avoid bleeds.

 

 

Used S/B Label 4 to die cut the image before starting to color, and left in the die so there would be a white edge when the background was laid in. Faux mat from gold paper.

 

S/B Arched Elegance die cut twice from a snippet of red gold dots dp.  Adhered the 2 pieces together onto a red snippet in a deeper color which topped the card base.

 

- Outline sticker sentiment and some red berry stickers finished off the card. Folks, I worked hard on this one, and like I said before, the watercolor magic just is not happening for me! I keep on trying periodically though!!!

 

I do hope you'll check out what my fellow Card Club Members have shared. I'm late with this card, so apologies. The links to their blogs are on the right side bar.

 

Additionally, I'm behind with commenting, so I'll do my best to get round to everyone who has left such sweet & generous comments on the past several cards. Hugs & Blessings to all of you. Hope the coming week will be a wonderful one.