Birthday: Bear and books

June is a busy month for card making, and not only that, but most of the cards are for men. On top of that, I’ve been doing this Copic Jumpstart class, so that is a lot of crafting to be done. I did manage to combine one piece of class homework — practising balancing colour across an image — with this birthday card though.

How:

The thing that took longest with this card, as with most masculine cards, was to come up with a suitable idea. Browsing around digi stamp sites, I spotted this bear asleep in a pile of books and knew that problem was solved. I printed the image onto Neenah solar white and coloured it with Copic markers, making sure to limit the range of colours and balance them throughout the image. So the shirt colour is echoed in the books and bookmark, and the green of the books is used later to colour the sentiment strip. The three main colours — the reddish-brown of the bear, blues and greens — almost form a split-complement on a colour wheel; though that is a lucky accident, rather than a planned choice.

Because it is a self-contained image, I wanted to keep the card design simple, but I wasn’t happy with the idea of just stamping a sentiment on the same panel as the image (I rarely feel happy with my positioning of sentiments like that). So I trimmed the panel to leave a narrow top and bottom border once it was mounted flush on a card base. I stamped the sentiment in Memento ink on a strip of Neenah and coloured it with Copic markers using the same blend as some of the books, though the effect is different because a much heavier coverage is needed to blend the colours over the larger area. I finished the card by mounting the strip on foam tape to the left of the image.

Class:

Copic Jumpstart class

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Create A Smile – mini birthday
• digital stamps:
  Di’s Digi Stamps – taking a break
• inks:
  Memento – tuxedo black
• Copic markers:
  bear body – YR24, YR27, E37
  bear feet – YR20, YR21
  bear nose – E55, E57, E59
  shirt – B00, B01, B02, B04, B06
  glasses – E23, E37
  bookmark – B0, B02, B04
  books, light green – YG93, G85, BG96
  books, dark green – YG95, YG97, YG99
  books, blue – B93, B95, B97
  book pages – E40, E41, E43
  shadow – W00, W1, W3, W5
  outline – BG0000
  sentiment strip – YG93, G85, BG96
• paper and card:
  Neenah – solar white – 216gsm
  Hunkydory – adorable scorable