Sweet Baby A

Thanks for all your well wishes.  This shingles thing is no fun.  My eye is still swollen, and my forehead is starting to look really ugly, but I feel like I'm turning the corner.  I'm going to head up to my office and see if I can get some writing done, but I took the morning to work on a card that kept me up last night.

I have a dear friend who just had a baby girl.  Their nursery colors are tan, coral, aqua and white.  I decided to use the negative space watercoloring lesson from Online Card Classes to customize a baby card.

To begin, I embossed the letter A from CTMH "Building Blocks" alphabet set in clear. Then I went to work on the background.  I spritzed my paper with water and dropped Yellow Deep and Yellow Ochre onto various places, swirled it around, then dropped Cobalt Blue and Rose Madder in a few places.  I let that dry then added more of the same colors, mixing a few to create purple and green hues.  Before it dried, I came in with a well-loaded brush and put Cobalt Blue near the edges of the A.  After it dried, I did a wash over the whole thing with Burnt Sienna.

After I lifted the embossing powder by ironing it off between two sheets of blank writing paper, I wet the entire letter and touched Compose Blue along the left side, adding more pigment to the edges to create shading.  With the embossing powder gone and touches of watercolor inside the letter, it looks like I worked harder than I actually did to create that crisp edge.

I trimmed the panel to 4x4, distressed the edges with Cocoa ink, stamped "sweet" and "Baby" in Cocoa, and handwrote the rest of Annalise's name.  Some gold sequins and Glacier Thick twine finished the card.

All stamps, ink, and accessories are from CTMH, watercolors are Holbien Artist's Water Color, and paper is Strathmore 300 Series 140# Cold Press.

Until next time,
Becca