Birthday: Sheep and motorbike

It was my brother’s birthday at the start of September and, as he spent one summer working with sheep many years ago, of course I had to break out MFT’s cute ewes for him. I also added a motorbike to the scene as I don’t think I can remember a time when he didn’t have a bike.

How:

I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to lay out the card so I started by printing the motorbike out with plenty of space around it. I stamped the larger sheep on a separate piece of card, coloured them with Copic markers and fussy cut them out. Once I’d figured out the layout, I stamped the little hillock for the sheep to stand on and then stamped the little sheep on the bike seat, lining up the lines on his feet with the edge of the seat so I didn’t have to worry about masking.

I did, however, need to mask off the combined bike and sheep to be able to do some Distress ink blending for the background. I used my lightbox to trace the image on to masking paper, which I then fussy cut out. With the bike masked off, I blended three Distress inks over the background, putting the brighter green in the foreground and blending into the duller colour further back.

Now I could finish off the Copic colouring of the bike and the little sheep, remembering to add some green dappling on the hillock. I also added some white gel pen highlights on the bike and the sheep’s hat and balloon.

I die-cut the panel with a large stitched rectangle and then used the tree border die along the top edge. I did a bit more ink blending on a spare bit of card, die-cut the tree shapes from it, and layered them in place. I used the same stitched rectangle die to cut a panel of blue to create the sky and layered that behind the trees.

The sheep on the hillock was popped up on foam tape and the leaping one was mounted on an action wobbler. I stamped the sentiment and age on a piece of card that I trimmed into the shape of a signpost and went over the edges with Distress ink. That was popped up on some thin foam tape and the whole panel was mounted on a white card base. The final touch was the addition of a few black enamels.

Supplies:

• stamps:
  My Favorite Things – ewe are the best
  Lawn Fawn – Smitty’s ABCs (numbers)
• digital stamps:
  motorbike colouring page
• dies:
  WPlus9 – tree border
• pens:
  Uni-ball Signo UM-153 – white
• inks:
  Memento – tuxedo black
  Versafine onyx black
• embossing powder:
  Wow! – super fine – clear gloss
• Distress ink pads:
  background – mowed lawn, peeled paint, forest moss
  signpost – hickory smoke
• Copic markers:
  sheep – W00, W1, W3, W5
  balloon & hat – Y06, Y19, YR04
  bike chrome – C00, C1, C3, C5
  bike tyres – T5, T7, T9
  bike engine – N1, N3, N5
  bike seat – W2, W4, W6
  bike paint – BG05, BG07, BG09
  bike shadow – G43, YG63, G94
• embellishments:
  Doodlebug – sprinkles – beetle black
• paper and card:
  Neenah solar white 216gsm
  Papermill Direct – smooth – marine blue
• miscellaneous:
  action wobblers