(Featured on the Honey Bee Stamps Blog today)
Hey there, I am so excited to have a chance to join the rest of the Honey Bee girls to celebrate Kathy Racoosin and The Daily Marker 30 Day Coloring Challenge. I am playing with some Curious Kitties today and my Spectrum Noir colouring pencils.
I started out by picking a few stamps and planning out a scene. I decided to use the big cat and three kitties, and to round out the scene I wanted to add the pet bed from the Playful Pups set too.
At this stage I didn’t know what my final card would look like, so I took an A5 piece of Neenah cardstock to work on. This was it would be big enough if I wanted to use the panel as the whole front of the card.
I wanted to use the no-line colouring technique, so I reached for my Antique Linen distress ink – this stamps in a pale brown colour, which almost disappears by the time you add all the colouring.
To build the scene, I needed to do quite a bit of masking. By laying out the stamps first, I was able to quickly figure out which images would need to be stamped first. You need to pick the ones which are foremost in the picture, the ones that are closest to the front. This little guy on the right was the first up! I also stamped the same image onto post-it tape to create a mask, then stamped the larger cat.
Before I stamp the kitty in its bed, I needed to stamp the kitty on the left, as he is sitting in front of the other one. Once again, I covered him in a mask so I could move over to the bed.
The bed was a trickier one, as I wanted the kitty to be sitting inside the bed, which would mean that the front of the bed would be in front of the kitty, but then back of the bed would be behind the kitty. To so this, I moved over to my MISTI tool. I lined up the clean stamp on my project, closed the lid to pick up the stamp, then laid down some post it tape – a piece which was slightly bigger than I needed. I stamped the bed onto the tape using the MISTI, then used an acrylic block to add the kitty to the mask. I also made pencil marks of where this post-it tape lined up with the rest of the stamped images. Then I carefully cut along the front of the bed – but not all the way. Then I was able to replace the post-it tape using the pencil marks, and fold up the bottom section of the mask and stamp the front of the bed.
Then I cut away the rest of the bed mask, leaving the kitty section intact. This meant I could stamp the rest of the bed, but leave a space for the kitty. Once I added this cute kitty, all my stamping was done. I made sure to store my masks on the back of the stamp package insert – even though its only a paper mask, they will likely work for another time or two.
Now that my layout was complete, I reached for my colouring pencils. I have a good selection of Spectrum Noir pencils, so I used these for the most of my card, but I did also add a few touches with some polychromos pencils.
For this no-line colouring project, I wanted to move away from cutesy, and try to create a more story-book feel, with some more details. I guess you could say they are a little more realistic – and when doing this, I sometimes like to use photographs as a point of reference. For the big kitty, I decided to make a ginger cat, so I used my phone to look up a few photos as reference. The kitten on the right is a bengal tabby. At this stage, they all look a bit weird, because you lose their features a little, especially their eyes, but if you keep going, it all works out in the end.
I took my time, and enjoyed the process – partly because it feels like it has been ages since I reached for my colouring pencils! I added some depth by creating shadow effects with a dark brown & black pencil, and I added texture using a sharp pencil nib to draw dots and tiny strokes.
I decided to also ground the kitties on some grass to create a finished scene. This is super easy, but really effective. All you need to do is add random upward strokes all over. Its important to use lots of shades of green, but also add some brown, yellow and a little blue to achieve a more realistic effect.
Finally my colouring was done, and I had to figure out how to turn it into a card. I wanted to keep the rest of the card very simple, as I didn’t want to distract from my newly created piece of art. And yes, I do think its art, even though it was made using stamps – I even added a little signature with a fine pencil. I liked the look of kraft cardstock behind my kitties, and picked out a few stamps from the Happiness and Sending You Sentiments stamp sets. I love how these coordinate so beautifully!
So there you have it – a little white embossing and the card was all done. This card is very different to my usual style, but I actually really enjoy doing something different every now and again. Thank you so much for joining me, and I hope you are able to come back this week to see what else the Honey Bee gang are up to as part of The Daily Marker 30 day coloring challenge!
Have a spectaCATular week!
Lesley
x
