Hi Friends, wish you very happy Diwali ! May the year ahead be healthy, wealthy and prosperous!!
Today I have some holiday cards to share with you. I used a beautiful stamp set by Hero Arts – Color Layering Dimensional Bird.
This stamp set has multiple holidays related sentiments, a beautiful bird outline, a branch, leaves, flowers, berries etc to create the whole scene. It also has several pieces that can be used to fill in the details of wings and tail for the bird. Each piece is a separate stamp so that the bird can be made as colorful as you want it to be. The packaging of the stamp has guidelines to assemble the whole bird.
All in all this stamp set seems to be versatile enough to be used for non-holidays cards too. For instance, you could create spring / summer cards with the bird-branch-flowers, or even fall themed cards by having the leaves fall colored. This time I used this stamp set to create four holiday cards at once.
First I prepared four watercolor panels by cutting them to 4.5×6 size. My original paper was the Canson 9×12 watercolor paper. I used my powder tool to prepare the surface against any static and stamped the bird on each panel using Versa Mark ink. I used only the outline bird stamp and filled in my own colors without using the layering stamps. (Will play with the layering some other time.)
I used three different colored embossing powders – gold, silver and green. The gold and the green came in Martha Stewart Heat Embossing starter kit. The silver one is from Wow! I will link to the actual supplies at the end of this post.
I wanted the branch to end behind the bird’s tail. So after embossing the bird outline, I put some masking fluid on its tail, let it dry for a couple minutes and then stamped the branch using brown ink from Hero Arts. After the branch dried completely, I used the tip of my fingers to remove the dried out masking fluid.
After getting the bird and the branch in place, I did some very simple coloring. Using distress ink I gave a light blue wash behind the branch and the bird.
On each section of the bird I started from the edge on left side with my darker color. Then from right side I went in with my lighter color and when the entire area was covered with color, I went with my lighter color over the areas where two colors met.
I used three different mediums for coloring the bird
Colored pencils for the blue and yellow one: I did not use any blending medium like gamsol. Only pencil colors.
Zig clear brush markers for the red –yellow one & the green one: These are the most vibrant ones. Love how bright these colors are.
My daughter’s watercolors for the pink-orange-brown one: I messed up the stamping on this one just a little bit at the tail end. But I figured it looks like a different kind of feathers, so just let it be.
After coloring the birds, I added sentiments (also from same stamp set using black ink from Simon Says Stamp), flowers (using red dye ink from Studio G), leaves (using green apple from Simon Says Stamp) and a few sequins. Finally, I die cut each panel using stitched rectangle dies and mounted on standard A2 sized card made with matching colored card stock.
I am sending these cards to the Hero Arts holiday cards challenge. Wish me luck :-)
Supplies List
For your convenience, I am sharing links to the supplies I’ve used – click on the picture or link to go directly to the product. Wherever available, I have used affiliate links, which means when you make a purchase, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I truly appreciate your support!
xoxo, ~Varada.
