Birthday card: Pisces

What:

When I heard that the theme of Kathy Racoosin’s pop-up challenge was going to be “lines”, my brain started ticking over. One of my current aims is to use some of the pieces I have in my stash; both painted backgrounds and images I’ve created for previous colouring challenges. I coloured a full set of zodiac toppers a while ago and haven’t used any of them yet, so I decided to take one of the watery signs and create some flowing lines as a background for it.

How:

The fish had been stamped in Memento ink on Neenah solar white card and coloured with Copic markers.

I started the background by drawing around the die I used to cut out the pisces topper; this created a small border around the coloured piece. I then drew the watery lines flowing around the circle using a Versamarker pen and clear heat embossed them.

With plenty of (too much) water on the paper, I dropped in a combination of blues and greens and moved them around until I was happy with the effect. This was then left to air dry thoroughly.

I cut and scored a top folding card base, trimmed the watercolour background to size and mounted it on the card. I die cut a circle of vellum to go behind the topper and glued them to the background.

For the sentiment, I die cut a dotted banner and heat embossed it in white. I trimmed a couple of scrap pieces of card into similarly sized banners, stacked them together with the main sentiment and used my tiny attacher (for the first time) to staple them together. A few dots of glue to keep them flat together and they were mounted on the card using some thin black foam tape.

The final touch was the addition of a few Doodlebug sprinkles.

Lessons Learned:

If you get too much water on the watercolour paper the paints can seep underneath the heat embossing and will show through if you’re using clear embossing powder.

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Mama Elephant – cosmic stars
  Crafty Impressions – happy birthday
• dies:
  Lawn Fawn – stitched circles
  Avery Elle – dotted elle-ments
• inks:
  Versamarker pen
• embossing powder:
  Hero Arts – ultra fine – clear
  Hero Arts – white
• colour:
  Gansai Tambi watercolours – 50, 57, 62, 63
• Copic markers:
  fish – Y15, Y17, Y18
• embellishments:
  Doodlebug – sprinkles – day to day assortment
• paper and card:
  Papermill Direct – plain – teal
  Anita’s – white vellum
  Neenah – solar white
• miscellaneous:
  Tim Holtz – tiny attacher