Panda in love

Another month, another cute image from Gerda Steiner to colour. This time it’s a panda sitting atop a pile of hearts, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

To avoid them all merging together into one big red pile, I used three different pinky-red blends for the hearts. I also added a bit of sparkle and shine to the big heart and faux stitching on some of the smaller ones.

A bit of a shadow underneath everything just helps to ground the image; rather than just floating over the middle of the white card, it feels like it actually belongs there.

Backgrounds are always tricky for challenge images. I am terrible at using white space, so I always want to add something, but don’t want to just repeat the simple ground-sky combo too often. I originally thought about doing a couple of large stencilled hearts behind him, but I wasn’t loving the idea. Then I remembered the “strobes” stencil sitting in my “new and must use” pile. I added Distress ink with a stencil brush, which gave a nice bit of extra definition along the edges and I think it works really nicely with the image.

I die-cut it with a postage stamp die (love these dies) and added dots around the edge.

I wanted to use ribbon behind the panda, but I didn’t want to add it directly onto the card base. But I also didn’t want to cover up all of the pretty pink with another layer of card. So I raided my stash for some as yet unused frosted sheet — this is stiff enough to wrap the ribbon around and the frosting lets the colour shine through while adding another texture to the card.

I die cut some small hearts to scatter around, put some directly on the card base and stuck the frosted sheet flat to the base. Then I used foam tape to pop the main panel up over the top and added a few more small hearts.

Challenges:

• Gerda Steiner Designs progressive challenge – January 2018
• The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge

Copic markers:

panda, white – W1, W00, 0
panda, black – W10, W9, W8, W6
hearts 1 – RV34, RV17, RV19
hearts 2 – RV25, RV29, RV69
hearts 3 – R24, R46, R59
hearts shadows – W5, W3, W1

Supplies:

• digital stamps:
  Gerda Steiner Designs – panda in love
• dies:
  Hero Arts – postage stamp infinity
  Lawn Fawn – hearts
• stencils:
  Visible Image – strobes
• ink pads:
  Distress – spun sugar, picked raspberry
• pens:
  Copic multiliner – pink 0.3
  Atyou Spica – pink, silver
• embellishments:
  Irresistible – pico embellisher – shimmer
  red ribbon
• paper and card:
  Neenah solar white 216gsm
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable pearly shimmer
• miscellaneous:
  Tim Holtz – frosted sheet